Cell Biology

Number of Shares and Voting Rights of Innate Pharma as of October 1, 2020 – GlobeNewswire

MARSEILLE, France, Oct. 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pursuant to the article L. 233-8 II of the French Code de Commerce and the article 223-16 of the French stock-market authorities (Autorit des Marchs Financiers, or AMF) General Regulation, Innate Pharma SA (Euronext Paris: IPH ISIN: FR0010331421; Nasdaq: IPHA) (Innate or the Company) releases its total number of shares outstanding as well as its voting rights as at October 1, 2020:

(1) The total number of theoretical voting rights (or gross voting rights) is used as the basis for calculating the crossing of shareholding thresholds. In accordance with Article 223-11 of the AMF General Regulation, this number is calculated on the basis of all shares to which voting rights are attached, including shares whose voting rights have been suspended. The total number of theoretical voting rights includes (i) voting rights attached to AGAP 2016 (2016 Preferred Shares), i.e. 130 voting rights for the AGAP 2016-1 and 111 voting rights for the AGAP 2016-2 and (ii) voting rights attached to AGAP 2017, i.e. 1 voting right per AGAP 2017.

(2) The total number of exercisable voting rights (or net voting rights) is calculated without taking into account the shares held in treasury by the Company, with suspended voting rights. It is released so as to ensure that the market is adequately informed, in accordance with the recommendation made by the AMF on July 17, 2007.

About Innate Pharma:

Innate Pharma S.A. is a commercial stage oncology-focused biotech company dedicated to improving treatment and clinical outcomes for patients through therapeutic antibodies that harness the immune system to fight cancer.

Innate Pharmas commercial-stage product, Lumoxiti, in-licensed from AstraZeneca in the US, EU and Switzerland, was approved by the FDA in September 2018. Lumoxiti is a first-in class specialty oncology product for hairy cell leukemia. Innate Pharmas broad pipeline of antibodies includes several potentially first-in-class clinical and preclinical candidates in cancers with high unmet medical need.

Innate has been a pioneer in the understanding of natural killer cell biology and has expanded its expertise in the tumor microenvironment and tumor-antigens, as well as antibody engineering. This innovative approach has resulted in a diversified proprietary portfolio and major alliances with leaders in the biopharmaceutical industry including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk A/S, Sanofi, and a multi-products collaboration with AstraZeneca.

Based in Marseille, France, Innate Pharma is listed on Euronext Paris and Nasdaq in the US.

Learn more about Innate Pharma at http://www.innate-pharma.com

Information about Innate Pharma shares:

Disclaimer on forward-looking information and risk factors:

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including those within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.The use of certain words, including believe, potential, expect and will and similar expressions, is intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the company believes its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including related to safety, progression of and results from its ongoing and planned clinical trials and preclinical studies, review and approvals by regulatory authorities of its product candidates, the Companys commercialization efforts, the Companys continued ability to raise capital to fund its development and the overall impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the global healthcare system as well as the Companys business, financial condition and results of operations. For an additional discussion of risks and uncertainties which could cause the company's actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Risk Factors (Facteurs de Risque") section of the Universal Registration Document filed with the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF), which is available on the AMF website http://www.amf-france.org or on Innate Pharmas website, and public filings and reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Companys Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019, and subsequent filings and reports filed with the AMF or SEC, or otherwise made public, by the Company.

This press release and the information contained herein do not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe to shares in Innate Pharma in any country.

For additional information, please contact:

See the rest here:
Number of Shares and Voting Rights of Innate Pharma as of October 1, 2020 - GlobeNewswire

Cell Biology

Letter urging Covid-19 vaccine trial participation sparks backlash – STAT

The presidents of two historically Black universities in New Orleans thought they were doing a public service by enrolling in a Covid-19 vaccine clinical trial back in August, so much so they urged their campus communities to consider doing the same.

I said we should inform our communities because I think theres something about teaching by example, said Reynold Verret, a biochemist who leads Xavier University of Louisiana. Were two Black men who rolled up their sleeves.

So Verret and Walter Kimbrough of Dillard University were stunned by the fierce backlash that followed their joint letter to faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Hundreds of outraged commenters flooded their schools Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook accounts.

advertisement

Our children are not lab rats for drug companies, said one post. I cant believe a HBCU would do this to our people, said another reply. Tuskegee, Tuskegee. Me and mine arent first in line, said another response.

The episode illustrates the challenges historically Black colleges and universities face as they seek to leverage their legacies of trust within African American communities to bolster lagging Black enrollment in Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials. Their recruitment efforts will need to overcome the deep-seated suspicions many Black Americans hold toward medical researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and the government that stem from long-standing racial injustices perpetrated by those institutions.

advertisement

Now, as the four HBCU medical colleges prepare to host Covid-19 vaccine trials on their campuses, theres hope their efforts will have more success.

Weve engendered a level of trust with communities of color that other organizations, quite frankly, just dont have, said James Hildreth, an immunologist and president of Meharry College of Medicine in Nashville. Its imperative for us as HBCUs to rise to this occasion because people need us.

Meharry College plans to begin a trial of a vaccine made by Novavax within the next two weeks, with Hildreth as its first participant. The goal is to enroll 300 at the site, but Hildreth thinks they can enroll 600 people, mostly African Americans. The other HBCU medical schools, Howard University College of Medicine in Washington D.C., Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, are planning to start their trials in the coming weeks.

By engaging with the four Black medical schools, Hildreth said, they will have individuals who look like them, sitting across the table, having these conversations, and we think thats going to make a huge difference.

As the death toll passes 210,000, the Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare inequalities within the U.S. health care system and labor force, with a large portion of Black workers employed in essential jobs that put them at risk of infection. Black Americans are three times as likely as white Americans to contract the disease, five times as likely to end up in the hospital, and twice as likely to die from it, according to the CDC. Had Black Americans died at the same rate as white Americans, some 20,800 Black people would still be alive.

Yet, clinical trials for vaccines are struggling to recruit from their communities. Moderna, one of the drug companies testing a shot, slowed down its trial after failing to enroll enough people of color among its 30,000 participants though as of last week it said one-third of volunteers were from diverse communities. Pfizer and BioNTech reported that 9% of their U.S. clinical trial enrollees are Black and 13% are Latino, while some 72% are white.

Watching all throughout the summer, you kept seeing stories that say there arent enough African Americans in these trials, said Kimbrough. You had people like Tony Fauci saying thats going to be a problem if we create this vaccine and it doesnt work for Black folks.

Though people are all nearly identical genetically, people of color might respond differently than white people to a vaccine, especially for a respiratory disease, due to social differences such as exposure to air pollution that disproportionately affects Black and brown communities, or higher rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes or sickle cell.

How we live and where we live impacts how medicine affects us, said Kimbrough. I think thats a powerful conversation that we need to be having.

He enrolled in a Phase 3 trial of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine after Verret mentioned in a phone call that hed done the same, through New Orleans Ochsner Health system. The study is double-blinded, so neither the participants nor the researchers know whether they received the vaccination or a placebo until the trial is over. (Because the vaccine doesnt contain any live virus, the participant has no risk of developing Covid-19 from the injection.)

In their letter, Kimbrough and Verret addressed the pain caused by the Tuskegee syphilis study in which Black patients were told they would be treated for the disease but werent and how it eroded trust between the Black community and health care providers.

We understand theyre scared, we understand the history, Kimbrough said, but were not just telling them this, were saying, Look, were doing this.

Outrage poured in nonetheless, fueled in part by a ProPublica story published a day before the presidents letter that found Ochsner had sent Black patients infected with coronavirus home to die despite the threat they could spread the disease to other people.

To Tevon Blair, a 2018 Dillard graduate, part of what made the letter unpalatable was the absence of predominantly white local universities such as Loyola and Tulane.

The red flag in this vaccine trial is that it is not a city-wide partnership with other colleges, Blair tweeted.

Myles Bartholomew, 22, a 2020 Xavier graduate who is pursuing his doctoral degree at Brown University in molecular biology, cellular biology and biochemistry, said that from a researchers point of view, he understood the importance of encouraging Black people to take part in clinical trials and said the presidents were acting unselfishly.

And then from a students perspective, theres a lot of panic and trepidation about anything related to Covid right now, Bartholomew said. He said he would not enroll in a clinical trial for a Covid-19 vaccine and he understands why other Black people wouldnt either due to distrust of medical research.

Those horror stories are something that is part of our history as African Americans, so wed be completely naive to ignore the precedents that have been set, he said.

The presidents responded to the social media criticism.

There was some misinformation that was being exaggerated, said Verret. The suggestion that there was money being paid to me or Dr. Kimbrough? No. That there was money paid to Xavier. No. That Xavier was requiring that all students be in the trial. No. He added that any of the standard clinical trial compensation he received participants are paid a nominal sum for their time he would donate to his parish.

The presidents letter may have helped make some headway in aiding recruitment, said Julia Garcia-Diaz, the principal investigator of the clinical trial at Ochsner. After it went out, she received an email from a woman in her late 60s who said she read the presidents note and wanted to sign up.

Not only was she elderly and African American, but she was a female also, said Garcia-Diaz. She ticked all sorts of boxes because women are also underrepresented in clinical trials.

Kimbrough said if he were to rewrite the letter, he would have addressed it to the general public rather than just his and Xaviers campus communities.

Thats a good lesson in terms of messaging, he said.

The HBCU medical schools have been working to make sure they get the messaging right as they address peoples skepticism. Their outreach includes interacting with faith-based organizations and participating in virtual town halls, like one hosted in September by Howard Universitys radio station and The Black Coalition Against Covid-19.

The major concern that people are expressing is the question, Am I being experimented upon? David Carlisle, the president of Drew and an internist, said during the town hall. I can assure individuals that this vaccine when you are taking it to fight Covid-19 is not an experiment that is being directed against the African American community.

He added that anyone considering enrolling should first ask their doctor if they should take this vaccine, why, and is this vaccine safe for them?

At Morehouse, Valerie Montgomery Rice, the president and an OB-GYN, is no stranger to recruiting diverse populations into clinical trials. When she helped run a clinical trial for a birth control pill at the University of Kansas in the 1990s, her site was commended for recruiting the highest percentage of minority women in the country. She said she is confident 60% to 70% of the people enrolled in the vaccine trial on her campus will be people of color, because Morehouse has long cared for the community.

The benefit that is with an HBCU medical college is that we deal with these issues everyday with our community. We are more culturally sensitive and more culturally aware, said Montgomery Rice. We have the trust of the community and weve earned that trust.

Nicholas St. Fleur is a University of Michigan Knight-Wallace reporting fellow.

Original post:
Letter urging Covid-19 vaccine trial participation sparks backlash - STAT

Physiology

The physiology of obesity – Medical Economics

Twenty-two years ago, the National Institutes of Health published the first ever evidence-based guidelines for identification and treatment of obesity. This 262-page report was an important milestone, but at the time, the authors stated that the understanding of how and why obesity develops is incomplete. Today, we know much more. And because of that knowledge, obesity care has changed radically in twenty years.

Today we know that obesity is an altered physiologic state.

The drivers of obesity

Obesity researchers know that obesity results from the effects of environmental triggers on genetically susceptible individuals. These triggers are many but may be grouped into four categories:

Alterations to the food supply are most cited the composition of food, its quantity, and its promotion to consumers. Research has identified many dimensions of the food supply that may contribute.

A physical and technological environment that makes routine physical exertion less common.

Stress and distress in many forms can promote a state of obesity.

Finally, drugs and chemicals can act as endocrine disruptors with the effect of promoting obesity.

Implications for primary care

Perhaps the most important change in understanding the physiology of obesity comes from a 2011 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Sumithran et al. demonstrated that weight loss causes changes in metabolic hormones that serve to return the body to its prior level of adiposity. Simply stated, the authors documented how the body acts to protect fat mass in subjects with overweight or obesity.

In other words, they documented that the physiology of obesity makes weight loss, by itself, unlikely to be an effective treatment for the chronic disease of obesity. It requires chronic treatment just like dyslipidemia, hypertension, or diabetes.

The meaning of these insights for primary care is straightforward. When obesity is a clinical concern, simply advising a patient to lose weight will have a negligible benefit. The physiology of this disease state will make long-term clinical improvement very unlikely even though many patients might lose weight in the short term.

The emerging standard of care is to use a range of treatments to help a patient reach and maintain a better state of health. These include dietary interventions, physical activity, behavioral therapy, pharmacotherapy, and metabolic surgery. Most often, a combination of these will yield the best outcomes, tailored to the needs of the patient.

A growing number of primary care physicians are seeking certification in obesity medicine to equip themselves to provide such treatment. Others might instead refer to an obesity medicine specialist. Either way, the patient will benefit from evidence-based care for this complex, chronic disease.

Ted Kyle is a pharmacist and health innovator living in Pittsburgh.

Here is the original post:
The physiology of obesity - Medical Economics

Physiology

The Global Preclinical Software for Physiology Data Assessment and Animal Supervision Market is expected to grow by $ 2.97 mn during 2020-2024…

TipRanks

Out on Wall Street, who has been leading the charge forward? Tech. After the spaces key players dragged the market lower in September due to overheated valuations, tech is once again at the helm.The rise in tech makes sense. The pandemic helped accelerate a move toward remote work and telecommuting, and this in turn has put a premium on tech products. From the 5G rollout, to improvements in semiconductor chips, to the expansion of IoT and smart device capabilities tech is everywhere, and its growing fast.Bearing this in mind, we turned to Needham, which lands among the top ten on TipRanks list of Top Performing Research Firms, for some inspiration. The firms analysts highlight three tech stocks that appear especially compelling, noting at least 30% upside potential could be in store for each.Weve used the TipRanks database to pull the details on these three tech picks, to find out what makes them such compelling opportunities.Silicon Motion (SIMO)Bringing extensive experience to the table, Silicon Motion provides high-performance storage solutions widely used in smartphones, PCs, data centers and commercial and industrial applications. Following a bang-up quarter, Needham believes this tech name has a bright future ahead.Writing for the firm, analyst Rajvindra Gill tells clients that based on SIMOs preannouncement, Q3 sales are set to land 8% above his original forecast, with EPS also beating his estimate by $0.09.What was behind this solid showing? A recovery in client SSDs. In Q2, SIMO's client SSD business, specifically the module maker component, declined as NAND flash makers allocated NAND capacity away from client SSDs to hyperscalers, to support the spike in data consumption on the network. However, the opposite happened in Q3. Along with a pause in hyperscale spending, module customers were allocated additional NAND capacity as NAND pricing declined quarter-over-quarter.To this end, Gill thinks NAND pricing could decline another 5-10% quarter-over-quarter in Q4. He added, We expect the decline in NAND pricing to further stimulate client SSD adoption in Q4 as this market is quiet price elastic, especially the channel markets.To a lesser extent, a rebound in China handsets along with a continued ramp of 5G handsets contributed to SIMOs strong performance, in Gills opinion.Whats more, the analyst argues that next-generation gaming consoles and desktop gaming could further boost SSD demand. Gill points out that based on reports from MSI, the board maker for Nvidia GPUs, demand for less expensive SSDs for higher-end gaming desktop computers is on the rise.Expounding on this, Gill stated, This could be potentially COVID-19 related demand as more people (of all ages) stay home and find more time to play video games. Moreover, we expect SIMO to participate in the next-generation gaming consoles (PS5, Xbox) coming out in the Fall. SIMO is shipping its PCIe SSD controllers into five out seven of the NAND makers sold into the game consoles; we believe two out of five could be SIMO's suppliers.If that wasnt enough, even though the penetration rates for laptops remain relatively high at 80-90%, Gill believes attach rates for SSDs in the desktop market could accelerate, driving upside in CY21.Given all of the above, Gill stayed with the bulls. Along with a Buy rating, he keeps a $55 price target on the stock. Investors could be pocketing a gain of 30%, should this target be met in the twelve months ahead. (To watch Gills track record, click here)Turning to the rest of the Street, the bulls have it on this one. With 4 Buys and a lone Hold, the word on the Street is that SIMO is a Strong Buy. At $49.60, the average price target implies ~18% upside potential. (See SIMO stock analysis on TipRanks)Domo (DOMO)As a business cloud software specialist, Domo helps its customers integrate data from any source, turn data into live visualizations and extend BI into apps. Based on positive momentum as well as new deals, Needham thinks that now is the time to snap up shares.After the company reported impressive fiscal Q2 2021 results, 5-star analyst Jack Andrews stands squarely with the bulls. Revenue of $51.1 million blew both his and the consensus estimate out of the water. Additionally, subscription revenue, billings and non-GAAP EPS exceeded his expectations.In our view, Domo appears to be benefiting from tailwinds related to the ongoing pandemic and improved sales execution (i.e. playbooks and an improving partner ecosystem) as it closed a notable amount of large deals within the quarter, Andrews explained.According to management, demand for digitizing business processes and real-time analytics is accelerating as a result of the pandemic. Its also seeing more customers allocate IT budgets to modernizing BI and gathering insights from dark data. To this end, DOMO finalized multiple over $100,000 deals in hard-hit industries like fitness and manufacturing. On top of this, it closed a multi-million dollar deal with one of the world's largest retailers that began with the initial use case of creating insights across its analytics stack, but now extends to new use cases such as an application for store restocking.Andrews also points out that momentum from the state-level COVID tracking continues to work in the companys favor, as the state of Iowa expanded significantly and extended its contract by two years. With the help of a partner, it inked a seven-figure contract to power a public-facing website to track pandemic funding grants in early fiscal Q3 2021.Whats more, Andrews highlights the encouraging commentary from management on its path to cash flow breakeven, which should alleviate any remaining financial concerns.To sum it all up, Andrews stated, We believe Domo has created a unique platform levered to the future requirements of enterprise analytics (self-service and scalability) without the exorbitant costs of implementation. As management executes changes in its sales strategy, we believe Domo, which trades at an EV/revenue multiple discount, can close the relative valuation gap to its Big Data software peer group.In line with his optimistic approach, Andrews reiterated a Buy rating and $61 price target. This target puts the upside potential at 46%. (To watch Andrews track record, click here)When it comes to other Wall Street analysts, opinions are split evenly. With 3 Buys and 3 Holds assigned in the last three months, DOMO earns a Moderate Buy consensus rating. Clocking in at $47.17, the average price target implies 13% upside potential. (See Domo stock analysis on TipRanks)Everspin Technologies (MRAM)Last but not least, we have Everspin Technologies, which develops and manufactures discrete magnetoresistive RAM or magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) products, including Toggle MRAM and Spin-Transfer Torque MRAM (STT-MRAM) product families. While the company has faced headwinds recently, Needham believes that MRAM could be a long-term winner.Firm analyst Rajvindra Gill, who also covers SIMO, is a serious fan. Consistent with the broader industry, data center demand has been moderating, which coupled with COVID-19-related headwinds, resulted in Q3 sales guidance that missed the mark.It should be noted that STT-MRAM is almost completely data center, while Toggle has some data center exposure since Toggle is used in RAID controllers. Additionally, thanks to COVID-19, there has been a surge in data center demand in the first half of 2020, boding well for MRAM. However, by the end of Q2, there was an increase in customer inventory.While this increase is partially due to supply chain concerns, we believe the main reason is a potential peak and expected slowdown in data center demand... However, we view the data center inventory digestion as a temporary setback, with a recovery expected in Q4, the analyst commented.Adding to the good news, MRAM thought that COVID-19 would negatively impact its ability to secure new design wins. That said, design wins grew by 16% quarter-over-quarter in Q2, which is over three times higher than the prior-year quarter. Gill mentioned, We expect growth to re-accelerate as the market recovers.The company kicked off mass production shipments of 32Mb Toggle MRAM product to a growing set of customers, with it planning to add different package and temperature grades to expand to new customer applications. If that wasnt enough, the second pivotal design win for MRAMs 1Gb STT-MRAM product is expected to start production shipments in Q3 into a persistent memory application for an OEM that sells into data center.Although gross margins were temporarily soft for Toggle and STT-MRAM due to the work-from-home environment, Gill argues that in the next few quarters, margins for both are likely to recover, driven by manufacturing efficiencies and lower material procurement costs.Everything that MRAM has going for it convinced Gill to maintain his Buy rating. In addition to the call, he left the price target at $10, suggesting 44% upside potential. Looking at the consensus breakdown, it has been quiet when it comes to other analyst activity. As Gill is the only analyst that has published a review recently, MRAM has a Moderate Buy consensus rating. (See MRAM stock analysis on TipRanks)To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

More here:
The Global Preclinical Software for Physiology Data Assessment and Animal Supervision Market is expected to grow by $ 2.97 mn during 2020-2024...

Physiology

Master of Science in Kinesiology | School of Community Health Sciences – Nevada Today

This will be a generalist masters in kinesiology. Students may choose to specialize in athletic training, biomechanics, exercise physiology or physical activity. The projected enrollment of this program is 30 full-time students. This program requires a minimum of 33 graduate credits, including at least 6 thesis credits.

This program will educate the best-prepared leaders who have rigorous training in emerging research areas such as athletic training, biomechanics and physical activity. The kinesiology master of science is a popular degree as either a terminal degree or together with a doctoral degree in biology, neuroscience, exercise physiology or physical education.

The need for trained kinesiology professionals is continuing to grow. For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the field of exercise physiologist is expected to grow by 13% from 2016 to 2026, faster than average for other fields. Individuals trained as athletic trainers are expected to have a 23% increase in positions from 2016 to 2026, which is much faster than average for many professions. There is a demand for well-trained individuals in all fields of kinesiology. This is especially true with the aging of the current workforce in this area and the aging of the baby boomers.

Read the rest here:
Master of Science in Kinesiology | School of Community Health Sciences - Nevada Today

Physiology

What’s the minimum light level needed in salmon RAS? – The Fish Site

So far, the existing lighting conditions for salmon in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) appear to be safe in terms of growth and mortality rates.

However, we still know little about how the light affects salmon physiology and how they cope with the change in lighting condition after transfer to sea water, says Jelena Kolarevic, Nofima senior scientist and project leader for CtrlAQUAs research into light.

There is little existing research on what the optimum light intensity and quality in RAS should be. Nevertheless, white LED lighting has become widespread in them. Very often RAS are managed without in-loop disinfection, which means that more particles and organic substances are present in the water, preventing the light from penetrating the water column. In sea-based net pen systems, daylight and clearer water represent the natural conditions where blue light penetrates the deepest, while red and yellow light is more common in recirculated water due to the accumulation of substances like humic and fulvic acids. The insights from netpen farming are therefore not directly applicable for the conditions in RAS.

The CtrlAQUA scientists have looked into how the use of white and full-spectrum LED light affects salmon post-smolt in RAS and how the water quality affects light penetration. Light is traditionally used in salmon farming to regulate the timing for smoltification.

The Health and Welfare of Atlantic Salmon course

It is vital that fish farm operatives who are responsible for farmed fish are trained in their health andwelfare. This will help to ensure that fish are free from disease and suffering whilst at the same timepromote good productivity and comply with legislation.

Based on experience from commercial RAS facilities, the scientists selected two light intensities (0,25 and 1,9 mol/m2/s) and two light qualities (white LED and full-spectrum LED). Post-smolt (young salmon that on-grown for some time in land-based sites after they are ready to be transferred to marine sites), were illuminated for 90 days, after which the scientists measured the water quality and salmon growth and mortality.

The results showed that a light intensity higher than 0,25 mol/m2/s does not affect the fish's growth and survival in the RAS facility.

The industry is looking into the minimum light intensity required for optimum growing conditions in order to cut costs. However, challenges still exist such as understanding the effect of light intensity below 0,25 mol/m2/s. Further research is needed.

In the current large tanks, with a depth of up to five metres, it will be difficult for the fish farmer to be able to distribute the light evenly without major investments. It's a challenge the industry has begun to look into," says Kolarevic.

The research will be presented at the Smolt Production in the Future webinar, on 21 October. More information is available at http://www.smoltproduksjon.no

See the article here:
What's the minimum light level needed in salmon RAS? - The Fish Site

Physiology

UC Berkeley Partners with Tracmo to Support the Physical & Mental Health of Caregivers and Dementia – PharmiWeb.com

UC Berkeley Partners with Tracmo to Support the Physical & Mental Health of Caregivers and Dementia Patients

Industry Background

Many previous studies, including a recently published paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Dr. Robert Levenson and Dr. Kuan-Hua Chen at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that couples with higher relationship satisfactions showed greater linkage in their physiological responses (for example, heart rate and skin conductance) during face-to-face interactions, which suggests a greater biological connection between the couples. In addition, there has been emerging evidence further suggesting that being physically linked with a partners physiological response may even have important implications to individuals mental and physical health. For example, more recent findings from Dr. Levenson and Dr. Chens group suggested that a couples physiological linkage can predict their mental and physical healthin both healthy married couples and couples in which one person is the spousal caregiver of the other who is diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease.

Building upon this, researchers wanted to better understand whether synchronicity of objective physiology indicators between dementia patients and their caregivers also correlates to the influences between each other outside the laboratory and real life. In one recent study, Dr. Levenson and Dr. Chen had 22 patients and their spousal caregivers wear a wrist-mounted actigraphy monitor in their homes for seven days. They found that the more linked (particularly more synchronized) the patients and the caregivers activity was, the less anxiety the caregiver reported that they experienced.

Understanding How Synchronicity Can Predict Physical and Mental Health

In all of the above studies, the linkage and relationship/health data were collected around the same time, therefore the researchers could not know whether greater linkage produced better relationship/health outcome, the vice versa, or both. In addition, research participants in these previous studies were mostly living in the San Francisco/Northern California areas, therefore the researchers could not know whether the effects that they found could be generalized to couples living in other, more rural areas in the United States (e.g., Montana).

To address these issues, Dr. Levenson and Dr. Chen have recently launched a research project that aims to recruit 300 patients-and their familial caregivers (therefore, the total number of participants will be 600) and study their activity linkage in their homes for six months. Over the study period, both the patients and caregivers will wear the TRACMO CareActive Watch continuously for six months, and caregivers will be monitored periodically for their mental and physical health changes.

Overcoming Research Challenges with Tracmo CareActive Watch

In order to carry out their study, the researchers needed a wearable device that would allow them to collect daily, real-time data from their subjects with the least amount of interference possible. However, the researchers found the traditional consumer wearable smart devices had a lot of shortcomings in a research setting, including short battery life, inaccurate location data, and complexity when it comes to usage. Tracmos CareActive Watch provided the researchers with the perfect solution.

We selected the Tracmo CareActive Watch because of its long battery life, ability to provide near continuous monitoring of wearers movement and relative position in the home, and ready

access to data uploaded to the cloud, according to Dr. Chen. In our view, the CareActive Watch provided the optimal feature set for our needs and the companys technical support was exemplary.

The Result

The progression of dementia can be rapid therefore it can make both the patients and caregivers feel anxious. This rapid progression also means that long term follow-up is usually required, but medical resources are limited - the time between every visit is too long for doctors to observe its change. With Tracmo CareActive Watch, the objective data are directly collected and recorded at home in real-time and can help doctors to evaluate and diagnose. It is very useful and helpful when dealing with cross districts, cross countries, and telemedicine and virtual-medical services.

The Tracmo CareActive Watchs user-friendly app allowed our sample of elderly research participants to complete self-installation with minimum frustration, according to Dr. Levenson. By having people with dementia and their familial caregivers both wear CareActive Watches, we are able to monitor and analyze longitudinal changes in movement and in-home location during individual activities and social interactions. This data is useful in helping us predict changes in the health and wellbeing of participants in our research studies.

The research target is to utilize the various activity indicators to establish behavioral analysis models, furthermore to predict the behavior changes and give early warnings of potential risks of mental health for caregivers. The ongoing study has shown that wearing CareActive Watch helps increase self-awareness of patients and caregivers, and improve the relationships through self-monitoring. It benefits not only dementia patients but also caregivers' mental health.

View post:
UC Berkeley Partners with Tracmo to Support the Physical & Mental Health of Caregivers and Dementia - PharmiWeb.com

Physiology

One-Two Punch – The UCSB Current

Drought is endemic to the American West along with heatwaves and intense wildfires. But scientists are only beginning to understand how the effects of multiple droughts can compound to affect forests differently than a single drought alone.

UC Santa Barbara forest ecologist Anna Trugman along with her colleagues at the University of Utah, Stanford University and the U.S. Forest Service investigated the effects of repeated, extreme droughts on various types of forests across the globe. They found that a variety of factors can increase and decrease a forests resilience to subsequent droughts. However, the study, published in Nature Climate Change, concluded that successive droughts are generally increasingly detrimental to forests, even when each drought was no more extreme than the initial one.

Droughts usually leave individual trees more vulnerable to subsequent droughts. Compounding extreme events can be really stressful on forests and trees, said Trugman, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. She compares the experience to a person battling an illness: Youll be harder hit if you get sick again while youre still recovering.

That said, the case is not quite so clear cut. Theoretically, responses to subsequent droughts could be quite varied depending on a wide range of tree-level and ecosystem-level factors, said lead author William Anderegg, an assistant professor at the University of Utah. So, while a drought may place a tree under considerable stress, it could also kill off some of its neighbors, leaving the survivors with less competition for water should arid conditions return.

Trugman and her colleagues used a variety of data sources to investigate this effect on a broad scale. Tree ring data spanning over 100 years enabled them to see how trees that survived an initial drought grew afterward. Data from the U.S. Forest Inventory and Analysis gave them access to metrics on tree mortality for more than 100,000 forest plots from 2000 through 2018. They combined these sources with satellite measurements of the water content in forest canopies.

Two clear tends emerged. We found that generally trees seem to become more vulnerable to stress after multiple droughts, especially conifers, Anderegg said.

The second finding, the researchers believe, comes down to basic physiology. Conifers and their kin have different vascular systems than broadleaf trees, or angiosperms. As a result, they may sustain more damage in an initial drought and be at a disadvantage compared to angiosperms during subsequent periods of drought stress. The tree ring data bears this out, showing that conifers that survived a drought grew much more slowly, especially if another drought settled in.

By contrast, angiosperms have much more flexible anatomy and physiology, and this seems to help them recover faster and more fully after initial droughts, Anderegg said.

Anderegg was particularly surprised by the impact repeated drought had on the Amazon Rainforest. We tend to think of these forests as not very impacted by drought and, due to their high tree diversity, able to recover quickly, he said. But our results indicate the Amazon has been hit hard by three very severe droughts in the past 15 years.

Forests are complex systems, and a variety of factors ultimately dictate how they respond to extreme events. In terms of damage you need to not only think about it at the individual level, but at the forest level as well, said Trugman. So, although they will need time to recover from an extreme drought, surviving trees will face less competition for water resources than they had before. This could leave them in a better situation if drought returns to the area.

Whats more, natural selection will drive the forest as a whole to transition toward more resilient individuals, or even to more drought tolerant species overall. Repeated droughts affect forest pests and pathogens as well, and their response to these conditions will also influence how forests behave.

Scientists are still working to untangle the conditions under which each of these factors rises to the top. This [study] provides a lot of motivation, said Trugman, but I think the next pressing step is to get at the underlying mechanisms at a physiological level and ecological level.

Researchers can use these insights to improve computer models and make more accurate forecasts about the future of forests in a changing climate. Climate change is going to bring more frequent droughts, Anderegg said, so we have to understand and be able to forecast how forests will respond to multiple droughts.

These results are especially crucial in the western U.S., he added, where we've had a number of major droughts in the past 20 years.

See the original post here:
One-Two Punch - The UCSB Current

Physiology

Why Is Eating at Night So Frowned upon in the Nutrition World? – The Great Courses Daily News

ByMichael Ormsbee, PhD,Florida State UniversityEdited by Kate Findley and proofread byAngelaShoemaker, The Great Courses DailyResearch studies focusing on whether eating before bed causes weight gain have shown that quantity and quality of consumed food are the determining factors. Photo By Photographee.eu / ShutterstockNighttime Eating Enigmas

If youre like most people, then you get hungry again before you go to bed at night. For a long time, it was believed that eating late at night before going to sleep was bad for your health and would automatically make you gain body fat.

However, we need to consider several things when the topic of nighttime eating is brought up. According to Professor Ormsbee, you should ask yourself where the recommendations are coming from and what the scientific evidence is.

Additionally, how is nighttime eating defined? Does this mean you should be monitoring what time you eat dinner? How does the nighttime meal size and composition influence your health?

Nighttime feeding has been a major research focus in my lab at Florida State University, Professor Ormsbee said. The original premise for starting this line of research stemmed from my glory days as a collegiate ice hockey player. I remember reading about the need to stop eating late at night to avoid gaining fat or feeling lousy.

Various media experts began to speak up about it, emphasizing that if you want to have a great body composition, you should avoid eating late at nightafter dinnerat all costs.

The trouble was that I always ate before going to bed, Professor Ormsbee said. I thought it would be good to help my body recover from practice and workouts so that I could become a better player. And just about everybody I knew who had low body fat and good muscle mass would not only eat at all times of the day, but would purposefully eat before bed and drink a protein shake or have some kind of protein before going to sleep.

How could people who ate before bed still have excellent body composition and perform well, when many in the media were telling us the opposite message? As it turns out, several factors influenced this public health message.

To understand why most people think that eating at night is bad, we need to dive into some research and physiology. An easy place to start would be with your circadian clock or circadian timing system.

We all have an internal clock that regulates our physiology with our daily behaviors and surrounding environment. For many of us, our typical circadian clock keeps us awake and active during the daytime hours and less active during the evening and night hours.

Because many of us are less active in the evening and late night hours, our clock is programmed to slow our internal system down at those times, too. However, does a less active system at night translate to fat gained if you eat at night? It depends.

Food we consume has two fates: iIt is either stored for later use or burned for energy. Since our biological clock slows things down at night, it seems obvious that food we eat at night will more likely be stored rather than burned during this time.

When you eat carbohydrates, the carbohydrates are broken down into smaller components like glucose that enter your blood. In response to the glucose, insulin is secreted from your pancreas to get the glucose into the cells. This effectively lowers blood glucose back to normal.

Research shows that for the same amount of glucose, greater amounts of insulin are required to remove it from the blood during the night as compared to the day. More insulin produced equals more storage at night.

If nighttime eating is not done often, there is likely no problem. However, if its repeated over time, chronically high insulin can lead to a desensitization of the insulin receptors and possibly lead to future problems with your glucose control.

Research has also shown that the energy cost of digesting and processing your foodthat is, the thermic effect of foodgoes down at night. That means that if you eat the same exact meal for breakfast as you do for dinner, youll have a lower energy expenditure in the evening.

We also know that we do not feel as full when we eat foods toward the later part of the day, so theres a chance well eat more food. Nighttime digestion also takes longer for food eaten later in the day to be emptied from the stomach and into the intestines during this time.

In summary, when we eat at night, more insulin is needed; we feel less full, so we eat more; and we have a slower digestion and less energy is used to digest and process food. This suggests that our physiology at night favors storage when we eat towards the later part of the day.

This may not be ideal for body composition. Therefore, it is easy to see how the message quickly spread to avoid eating in the evening.

Michael Ormsbee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food, and Exercise Sciences and Interim Director of the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine in the College of Human Sciences at Florida State University. He received his MS in Exercise Physiology from South Dakota State University and his PhD in Bioenergetics from East Carolina University.

More:
Why Is Eating at Night So Frowned upon in the Nutrition World? - The Great Courses Daily News

Physiology

Concussion Prevention: Sorting Through the Science to See What’s Sound – American Council on Science and Health

ByJames Smoliga, High Point University

As his helmet collided violently with his opponents shoulder, Luke Kuechly looked like a life-size bobblehead doll. In an instant, the Carolina Panthers star linebacker suffered yet another concussion. His season, and perhaps career, was in jeopardy.

A few weeks earlier, Kuechly began wearing an experimental collar around his neck designed to protect his brain from within. The device, known as the Q-Collar and previously sold as NeuroShield, is designed to mimic the woodpeckers method of injury protection by keeping more blood inside the skull to create a bubble wrap effect around the brain.

So, why didnt this nature-inspired safety equipment avert Luke Kuechlys 2017 concussion, which apparently he still wears?

As a physiologist and sports medicine researcher, I study how the body responds to exercise and other stressors. I also study ways to prevent and treat sports injuries. As the public learns more about the potential long-term dangers of contact sports, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), parents, athletes and sports organizations are desperate to find a quick fix to the concussion crisis. Unfortunately, I do not think there is an easy solution to make inherently high-risk sports safe.

The high altitude argument

Back in 2014, a friend told me about a study which reported that NFL players were 20-30 percent less likely to sustain a concussion in games played at higher altitudes. The researchers theorized that higher altitude caused a slight swelling in the brain, and consequently increased brain volume.

This tighter fit inside the skull would reduce brain slosh during impacts to reduce the likelihood of concussions. Since higher altitude seemed to protect the brain, they argued, it would be beneficial to replicate this tighter fit. The authors proposed this could be achieved by applying slight pressure on the necks jugular veins to trap a bit more blood inside the brain. A few years earlier, a member of their research team filed a patent for such a device a jugular compression collar.

While those less familiar with physiology may have been persuaded by this fascinating-sounding explanation, my fellow researcher, Gerald Zavorsky, and I thought this idea was scientifically implausible. Most importantly, the study defined higher altitude as anything above a meager 600 feet above sea level way too low to have any effect on brain volume. Essentially, our brain volume stays remarkably constant at high altitude, even when we may feel short of breath or lightheaded. In the Mile High City of Denver, which houses the highest NFL stadium in the country at 5,280 feet above sea level, you would be hard-pressed to experience even a miniscule swelling in the brain. However, at much higher elevations, there is actually an increased likelihood for brain swelling which causes a life-threatening emergency called high altitude cerebral edema.

A game of chance

If altitude does not cause a protective increase in brain volume, then why were concussions reduced in NFL games played at greater than 600 feet above sea level? To answer this question, we examined the same publicly available NFL data set. The original study looked at data from two combined seasons (2012 and 2013), but we analyzed a few additional years. We confirmed that concussion rate was indeed statistically reduced at higher altitudes during the 2013 season, but not in the 2012 season. We dug deeper and found no connection between altitude and concussions in the 2014 or 2015 seasons. A separate study in college athletes showed concussions were even more likely at higher altitude.

Since the effect wasnt consistent and repeatability is a major problem in all of science, we suspected the original linkages were due to random chance a mathematical artifact of using a huge data set of nearly 1500 gridiron giants literally butting heads with one another on a weekly basis. If that was the case, we might expect that something completely arbitrary to also be associated with a reduced risk of concussion. And, indeed our analysis demonstrated that is true. It turns out that NFL teams with animal logos, such as the Miami Dolphins, also had a 20-30 percent reduced risk of concussion compared to teams without animal logos, such as the Pittsburgh Steelers, regardless of game altitude.

Based on our analysis, we concluded that random chance, not physiological response, explains why concussions were less likely at altitudes above 600 feet. Thus, an altitude-mimicking collar seems unjustified for preventing concussions.

The woodpecker theory

Supposedly, the Q-Collar also replicates how woodpeckers naturally protect themselves from headaches. According to company information, woodpeckers compress their jugular vein using their neck muscles to induce tighter fit and reduce brain slosh. While this amazing-sounding mechanism is often presented as a fact, it does not seem to be mentioned anywhere in over a century of scientific studies examining woodpeckers.

I thoroughly examined all of the woodpecker papers I could find, and then tracked down all of their references, and repeated the process. I discovered ornithology papers from the 1700s through cutting-edge engineering models of woodpecker biomechanics, but none mentioned jugular compression. Thus, it is not surprising that the company does not cite any scientific references to woodpecker literature.

Even if this mechanism does exist and has been somehow overlooked by woodpecker researchers, evolution gave the woodpecker numerous unique protective adaptations. I teamed up with a woodpecker researcher and published a summary of these mechanisms in October 2018. These include a specialized skull bone structure and a shock-absorbing beak. Woodpeckers even use very specific postures and movements to brace themselves, which helps to dissipate force away from their brains. We concluded that these multiple protective mechanisms work in harmony, which cannot be replicated by simply pushing on ones jugular vein.

New research suggests that woodpeckers may indeed experience brain injuries similar to those seen in humans. Regardless, the physics of woodpecker drumming are quite different than that of sports concussions, which generally happen with unpredictable timing, and involve considerable head rotation. Despite its intuitive appeal, I believe that a woodpecker-mimicking collar is more pseudoscience than innovation.

Beyond sports concussions

As my colleagues and I have been debunking the scientific rationale for the Q-Collar, research examining the Q-Collar seems to have shifted from reducing the risk of concussions, or distinct events following a single hit, to a less tangible goal of reducing brain damage from repeated subconcussive impacts.

New research claims evidence of benefit, based on MRI data. As one article stated in 2016, the collar may have provided a protective effect against brain microstructural changes after repetitive head impacts. An article published in October 2018 from a small study showed that the brains of female soccer players who wore collars for a season seemingly showed no brain damage. Those who did not wear the collar did show small changes in some areas of their brain.

However, some other researchers have expressed concerns over the small numbers of subjects and the high dropout rates in similar studies about the collar. Some physicians have concluded that this evidence is not enough to suggest that it does protect the brain from injury and current promotional campaigns are potentially misleading. I also remain skeptical of these findings, since the clinical utility of this particular type of MRI data remains unclear, especially in relation to long-term health.

As the company aims for FDA approval and looks beyond sports applications, I fear that long-term brain health is being placed in equipment justified by misunderstandings of physiology, coincidental relationships, and yes, even what Ive concluded are incorrect claims about woodpeckers and other animals.

Some may argue that even if it does not work, there is no harm in adding an extra layer of protection. However, I believe this is a dangerous attitude. When athletes feel they are more protected, they have a false sense of extra safety and play more aggressively. This may actually increase risk of injury.

As Luke Kuechly and others can attest, even innovative-sounding equipment cannot stop concussions in contact sports. Unfortunately, we may not know if long-term brain damage can actually be limited by new technologies until it is too late.

*****

James Smoliga, Professor of Physiology, Department of Physical Therapy, High Point University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

See the rest here:
Concussion Prevention: Sorting Through the Science to See What's Sound - American Council on Science and Health