Tag Archives: environment

Cell Biology

Postdoc Position in Metabolomics and Proteomics Biomarkers Discovery job with MASARYK UNIVERSITY | 303929 – Times Higher Education

Department:Biomarkers of Disease and HealthFaculty of ScienceDeadline:31 Aug 2022Start date:upon agreementJob type:full-timeJob field:Science and research

Bursar of the Faculty of Science, Masaryk Universityannounces an open competition for the positionPostdoc Position in Metabolomics and Proteomics BiomarkersDiscovery

Workplace:RECETOX, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech RepublicType of Contract:temporary position with 1-year contract (with possible extension), non-academicWorking Hours: 1,0 FTE(full-time employment of40 hours per week)Expected Start Date: as soon as possible, or negotiable concerning immigration timelines for non-EU candidatesNumber of Open Positions:1Pay:negotiable Application Deadline:31.8.2022 EU Researcher Profile:R2

About the Workplace

Masaryk Universityis modern, dynamic and the most attractive university in the Czech Republic with ten faculties, more than 6000 staff and 30000 students, awide range of research areas and astrong international position. We are the largest academic employer in the South Moravian Region.

Faculty of ScienceMU,holder of theHR Excellence in Research Awardby the European Commission, is aresearch-oriented faculty, offering university education (Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degree programs) closely linked to both primary and applied research and high school teaching of the following sciences: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Earth sciences. We are the most productive scientific unit of the Masaryk University generating around 40 % of MU research results.

RECETOXfocuses on interdisciplinary research and education in the area of Environment & Health, studying toxic compounds and their behavior, transport & bioaccumulation to evaluate environmental effects, assess the exposure and health risks to humans, and develop technologies and biotechnologies to break them down.http://www.recetox.muni.cz/en/career/career-at-recetox

Job description

Clinically relevant biochemical, immunological and cellular biomarkers of Alzheimer'sdisease and aging

Dr. Zdenek Spacilis searching for atalented and highly motivated scientistexperienced in mass spectrometry and cell culture. The primary responsibilities will include cerebral organoids' cell culture as amodel system for Alzheimer'sdisease and the application of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics and proteomics to study the underlying mechanisms and early disease biomarkers. The candidate will be involved in amultidisciplinary project combining advanced analytical technology with state-of-the-art cell biology to advance life sciences and medicine.

Biomarkers of health and diseaseresearch group led by Zdenek Spilzdenek.spacil@recetox.muni.czis engaged in metabolomics and targeted proteomics, pioneering non-genetic factors affecting human health.https://www.recetox.muni.cz/en/research/principal-investigators/dr-zdenek-spacil

Skills and Qualifications

The applicant must have:

The applicant should have:

Informalinquiries about the positioncan be sent to Ji Dobe,jiri.dobes@recetox.muni.cz,+420549493268.

We Offer

Application Process

The application shall besubmitted online by 31.8.2022 via an e-application,please find the reference to the e-application in the beginning and end of the advertisement.

The candidate shall provide following:

After submitting your application successfully, you will receive an automatic confirmation email from jobs.muni.cz. In case of problems with filling in the e-application form, please contact us by e-mail:rcx-hr@recetox.muni.cz.

Selection Process

Received applications will be considered carefully in line withprinciples of the EU Charter and Code for Researchers. Selection criteria: (i) meeting qualification requirements described above, (ii) all required documents provided.

If we do not contact you within 10 working days after the application deadline at the latest, it means that we have shortlisted other candidates meeting the position requirements.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for apersonal or online interview.The Faculty Recruitment Policy (OTM-R) can be seenhere.

Faculty of Science, Masaryk University is an equal opportunity employer. We support diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Visit ourCareer pageand alsoCareer page of Faculty of science.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

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Postdoc Position in Metabolomics and Proteomics Biomarkers Discovery job with MASARYK UNIVERSITY | 303929 - Times Higher Education

Genetics

My Insights to Cancer Genetics After More Than 20 Years of Brain Tumor Survival – Curetoday.com

I never knew cancer would enter my life. Nobody in my family had cancer, and I did not think about the disease. I was in my early 20s and excited for my future.

Diagnosed with a brain tumor on March 18, 1998, parts of me went into a dark frozen place. I quickly had to find some ways to perform research to find the best course of action. Since then, I have had three awake brain surgeries in 1998, 2011 and 2013, radiation and chemotherapy in 2014, and an immunotherapy clinical trial with a dendritic cell-based vaccine the same year. I continued to have MRIs and other tests regularly that I still do.

Early in my cancer journey, I learned about complementary and alternative therapies. I wanted to prevent the brain tumor and support my wellness. Over several years, I focused on integrative cancer care for the whole person to improve quality of life and survival.

Research says that many cancers link to lifestyle factors and the environment. As a result, I studied and used new strategies that I felt would be optimal to live better and feel longer: a healthy organic diet, exercise, stress reduction, meditation, massage, acupuncture, a cleaner environment, the mind-body connection and other approaches have shown benefits to cancer patients. Ive done much more than that, yet an unexpected problem emerged.

In 2018, I felt tremendously grateful to become a 20-year brain tumor survivor. But my body wasnt perfect, including some funks in my gut. I saw two gastrointestinal doctors who ultimately said to get a colonoscopy and endoscopy. At that point, the U.S. government recommended a colonoscopy starting at 50 years, but being 45 years old, I did it anyway. The results showed almost 30 large polyps and 100 smaller polyps.

Moreover, I had to meet with a genetic counselor. The simple blood test showed I had mutations in the MUTYH gene from family history. This hereditary condition is characterized by developing multiple colorectal adenomatous and increased colorectal cancer risk. Due to my mutation, it is vital to get colonoscopies and endoscopies regularly. The report also noted different cancer types as possibilities.

The National Cancer Institute says that 5 to 10% of cancer diagnoses are related to genetics. Some research has shown that it is slightly higher. Regardless, eachindividual needs to address and track their uniquesituation.

Practitioners may not talk about genetics unless two family members have had cancer. In 1998 when diagnosed, nobody in my family had cancer. It only surfaced when my grandma was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died two weeks later in 2010, and my brother was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma in 2018. They were diagnosed 12 and 20 years, respectively, after my brain tumor diagnosis.

I know genetic cancers are rare, but both patients and practitioners must explore and track the situation.

Through an ultrasound ordered by my OBGYN a few years ago, I learned that I needed to get endometrial surgery to remove polyps. That happened in 2020 and 2022. The pathology report from the endometrial surgery this year showed I had a precancerous lesion. Details said I needed to get a hysterectomy, which occurred in June of 2022. I am feeling vibrantlywell while still taking care of my body post-surgery.

I know challenges can become opportunities, and adversity can be turned into actions. In my path, Ive learned that understanding the past, addressing the present and engaging wellness for the future is essential for thriving. Indeed, even though the unexpected can emerge, its helpful to have a plan, team and self-care strategies blended with gratitude and resilience. I wish you optimal health and healing.

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, dont forget tosubscribe to CUREs newsletters here.

Read more here:
My Insights to Cancer Genetics After More Than 20 Years of Brain Tumor Survival - Curetoday.com

Genetics

Is alcoholism genetic? Everything you need to know as Vicky Pattinson opens up about her battles – Evening Standard

V

icky Pattison has opened up about her struggle with alcohol and said she was scared to have kids who felt broken like her.

The former Geordie Shore star, 34, has been working with Channel 4 on a documentary about her father, who is an alcoholic and her own relationship with alcohol.

During an interview with Skys Beth Rigby, Vicky admitted to having an addictive personality, adding that she was scared of history repeating itself, as her father is an alcoholic.

Vicky explained that she was unable to live a balanced life and was often self-sabotaging. The media personality said: I always worried because Im like him in a lot of ways and I was aware that I had an addictive personality.

Speaking about her fears around having children, Vicky said: I was also just really scared that I was going to have children who felt in some way broken like me.

But the documentary has brought us a lot of peace and clarity.

But, what is alcoholism, and is it genetic? Heres everything you need to know.

What is alcoholism?

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) defines alcohol dependency as a form of problem drinking that has become severe, with compulsive behaviors and physical dependence associated with the condition.

What causes alcoholism?

Typically, alcohol addiction is considered to involve several complex risk factors:

Stress in ones work or home life may trigger an addiction. When the person drinks alcohol, for example, they may feel relaxed and happy compared to the stress they feel when they are sober. This reinforces the desire to use alcohol as a coping mechanism for stress.

Those who have mental illnesses, especially anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are very likely to struggle with co-occurring alcohol use disorder.

Women are at risk of developing alcoholism faster than men due to differences in body mass, hormones, and metabolism.

Is alcohol dependecy genetic?

Genetics and family history are the most correlated with risk of alcohol dependency, in fact, genetic risk is about half of the problem, while family history is the other half.

Certainly, genetics are passed down through families, but family history also includes the environment in which one was raised. Childhood abuse, parental struggles, and mental illness in close family members all contribute to the risk of developing an addiction to drugs or alcohol.

These are numerous genes found to be associated with substance abuse, including alcoholism. Some genes can help a person regulate their alcohol consumption or avoid the substance altogether; others increase the persons risk of abusing alcohol.

Gene expression is also affected by environment. If a person grows up in a house with a parent who abuses drugs, struggles with mental illness, suffers a major financial setback or similar stress, and the child has a gene linked to alcohol use disorder, they are very likely to develop this condition later in life.

Prevention and education programs can address this risk as part of regular medical checkups. Genetics are understood to be a component of AUD, but not the sole cause.

If youre struggling with alcohol abuse, there are some useful tips on the NHS website for support.

Read more:
Is alcoholism genetic? Everything you need to know as Vicky Pattinson opens up about her battles - Evening Standard

Neuroscience

Going to the Beach? Planning a Hike? Be Prepared: Men Will Be Much Hungrier! – Neuroscience News

Summary: In males, sun exposure activates the p53 protein which signals to the body to produce the appetite-associated ghrelin hormone. In women, estrogen blocks the interaction between p53 and ghrelin, reducing the urge to eat following sun exposure.

Source: Tel Aviv University

A new study from Tel Aviv University reveals that solar exposure increases appetite in males, but not in females. Conducted on lab models, the study unravels the differences between males and females in the activation of the metabolic mechanism.

The researchers explain that in males of both animal species and humans, sun exposure activates a protein called p53, in order to repair any DNA damage in the skin that might have been caused by the exposure. The activation of p53 signals the body to produce a hormone called ghrelin, which stimulates the appetite.

In females, the hormone estrogen blocks the interaction between p53 and ghrelin, and consequently does not catalyze the urge to eat following exposure to the sun.

The groundbreaking study was led by Prof. Carmit Levy and PhD student Shivang Parikh of the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry at TAUs Sackler Faculty of Medicine.

It was conducted in collaboration with many researchers in Israel and worldwide, including contributors from Tel Aviv Sourasky (Ichilov), Assuta, Meir, and Sheba Medical Centers, along with Dr. Yiftach Gepner and Dr. Lior Bikovski from TAUs Sackler Faculty of Medicine, and Prof. Aron Weller of Bar-Ilan University.

The paper was published in the prestigious journalNature Metabolism.

The study was based on epidemiological data collected in a year-long survey about the eating habits of approximately 3,000 Israelis of both sexes, including self-reports from students who had spent time in the sun, combined with the results of a genetic study in a lab model.

The findings identify the skin as a primary regulator of energy and appetite (metabolism) in both lab models and humans.

The researchers explain that there is a dramatic metabolic difference between males and females, impacting both their health and their behavior. However, so far it has not been established whether the two sexes respond differently to environmental triggers such as exposures to the suns UV radiation.

Prof. Levy: We examined the differences between men and women after sun exposure and found that men eat more than women because their appetite has increased.

Our study was the first gender-dependent medical study ever conducted on UV exposure, and for the first time, the molecular connection between UV exposure and appetite was deciphered.

Gender-dependent medical studies are particularly complex, since twice the number of participants are required in order to find statistically significant differences.

Prof. Levy concludes: As humans, we have cast off our furand consequently, our skin, the largest organ in our body, is exposed to signals from the environment. The protein p53, found in the skin, repairs damage to the DNA caused by sun exposure, but it does more than that. It signals to our bodies that winter is over, and we are out in the sun, possibly in preparation for the mating season.

Our results provide an encouraging basis for more research, on both human metabolism and potential UV-based therapies for metabolic diseases and appetite disorders.

Author: Noga ShaharSource: Tel Aviv UniversityContact: Noga Shahar Tel Aviv UniversityImage: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.Food-seeking behavior is triggered by skin ultraviolet exposure in males by Carmit Levy et al. Nature Metabolism

Abstract

Food-seeking behavior is triggered by skin ultraviolet exposure in males

Sexual dimorphisms are responsible for profound metabolic differences in health and behavior. Whether males and females react differently to environmental cues, such as solar ultraviolet (UV) exposure, is unknown.

Here we show that solar exposure induces food-seeking behavior, food intake, and food-seeking behavior and food intake in men, but not in women, through epidemiological evidence of approximately 3,000 individuals throughout the year.

In mice, UVB exposure leads to increased food-seeking behavior, food intake and weight gain, with a sexual dimorphism towards males.

In both mice and human males, increased appetite is correlated with elevated levels of circulating ghrelin.

Specifically, UVB irradiation leads to p53 transcriptional activation of ghrelin in skin adipocytes, while a conditional p53-knockout in mice abolishes UVB-induced ghrelin expression and food-seeking behavior. In females, estrogen interferes with the p53chromatin interaction on the ghrelin promoter, thus blocking ghrelin and food-seeking behavior in response to UVB exposure.

These results identify the skin as a major mediator of energy homeostasis and may lead to therapeutic opportunities for sex-based treatments of endocrine-related diseases.

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Going to the Beach? Planning a Hike? Be Prepared: Men Will Be Much Hungrier! - Neuroscience News

Human Behavior

Did Nature Heal During the Pandemic Anthropause? – The New York Times

To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

In a typical spring, breeding seabirds and human seabird-watchers flock to Stora Karls, an island off the coast of Sweden.

But in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic canceled the tourist season, reducing human presence on the island by more than 90 percent. With people out of the picture, white-tailed eagles moved in, becoming much more abundant than usual, researchers found.

That might seem like a tidy parable about how nature recovers when people disappear from the landscape if not for the fact that ecosystems are complex. The newly numerous eagles repeatedly soared past the cliffs where a protected population of common murres laid its eggs, flushing the smaller birds from their ledges.

In the commotion, some eggs tumbled from the cliffs; others were snatched by predators while the murres were away. The murres breeding performance dropped 26 percent, Jonas Hentati-Sundberg, a marine ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, found. They were flying out in panic, and they lost their eggs, he said.

The pandemic was, and remains, a global human tragedy. But for ecologists, it has also been an unparalleled opportunity to learn more about how people affect the natural world by documenting what happened when we abruptly stepped back from it.

A growing body of literature paints a complex portrait of the slowdown of human activity that has become known as the anthropause. Some species clearly benefited from our absence, consistent with early media narratives that nature, without people bumbling about, was finally healing. But other species struggled without human protection or resources.

Human beings are playing this dual role, said Amanda Bates, an ocean conservation scientist at the University of Victoria in Canada. We are, she said, acting as threats to wildlife but also being custodians for our environment.

The research has actionable lessons for conservation, scientists say, suggesting that even modest changes in human behavior can have outsize benefits for other species. Those shifts could be especially important to consider as the human world roars back to life and summer travel surges, potentially generating an anthropulse of intense activity.

A lot of people will feel like they want to catch up on holiday travel, work travel, catch up on life, said Christian Rutz, a behavioral ecologist at the University of St Andrews who introduced the concept of an anthropulse in a recent paper. (He and Dr. Bates were also part of the team that coined anthropause.)

Humans will and should travel and should enjoy nature, he added. But I think it can be quite subtle tweaks to how we do things that can still have a huge impact.

When the pandemic hit, many human routines came to a sudden halt. On April 5, 2020 the peak of the pandemic lockdowns 4.4 billion people, or 57 percent of the planet, were under some sort of movement restriction, scientists estimated. Driving decreased by more than 40 percent, while air traffic declined by 75 percent.

These sudden shifts allowed researchers to tease apart the effects of human travel from the many other ways we shape the lives of other species.

We know that humans impact ecosystems by changing the climate, we know that they have dramatic impacts by changing land use, like razing down habitat and building shopping malls, said Christopher Wilmers, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. But this sort of strips all that away, and says, Oh, well, what are the impacts of human mobility itself?

With humans holed up in their homes cars stuck in garages, airplanes in hangars, ships in docks air and water quality improved in some places, scientists found. Noise pollution abated on land and under the sea. Human-disturbed habitats began to recover.

In March 2020, Hawaiis Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, a popular snorkeling destination, closed and remained shuttered for nearly nine months. The pandemic reset the visitor impacts to zero, said Kuulei Rodgers, a coral reef ecologist at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

Without swimmers kicking up sediment, water clarity improved by 56 percent, Dr. Rodgers and her colleagues found. Fish density, biomass and diversity increased in waters that had previously been thick with snorkelers.

Indeed, scientists found that many species had moved into new habitats as pandemic lockdowns changed what ecologists have sometimes called the landscape of fear.

All animals are, you know, trying not to die, said Kaitlyn Gaynor, an ecologist at the University of British Columbia. That drive to survive prompts them to keep their distance from potential predators, including humans. We are noisy and novel and resemble their predators and in many cases are their predators, Dr. Gaynor said.

For instance, the mountain lions that live in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California typically stay away from cities. But after local shelter-in-place orders took effect in 2020, the animals became more likely to select habitats near the urban edge, Dr. Wilmers and his colleagues found.

Dr. Wilmers speculated that the mountain lions were responding to changes in the urban soundscape, which might typically be filled with human chatter and the rumble of passing cars. But as soon as those audio stimuli are gone, then the animals are, like, Well, might as well go see if theres anything to eat here, he said.

Just north, in a newly hushed San Francisco, white-crowned sparrows began singing more quietly, yet the distance across which they could communicate more than doubled, researchers found.

The birds also began singing at lower frequencies, a shift that is associated with better performance and an improved ability to defend territory and woo mates. Their songs were much more sexy, said Elizabeth Derryberry, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and an author of the study.

And it was overnight, she added. Which kind of gives you hope that if you reduce noise levels in an area, you can have immediate positive impact.

But the effects of human absence were nuanced, varying by species, location and time.

Multiple studies found that as traffic eased in the spring of 2020, the number of wild animals that were struck and killed by cars declined. But the number of wildlife-vehicle collisions soon crept back up, even as traffic remained below normal levels, one team of researchers reported.

Per mile driven, there were more accidents happening during the pandemic, which we interpreted as changes in animal space use, said Joel Abraham, a graduate student studying ecology at Princeton University and an author of the study. Animals started using roads. And it was difficult for them to stop, even when traffic started to rebound.

The lockdowns seemed to embolden some invasive species, increasing the daytime activity of Eastern cottontail rabbits in Italy, where their rapid expansion may threaten native hares, while disrupting efforts to control others. For instance, the pandemic delayed a long-planned project to cull giant, predatory mice from Gough Island, a critical habitat for threatened sea birds in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The mice, which likely arrived with 19th-century sailors, attack and feed on live bird chicks, often leaving large open wounds. I nicknamed them vampire mice, said Stephanie Martin, the environmental and conservation policy officer for Tristan da Cunha, the archipelago of which Gough Island is a part. Many chicks succumb to their injuries.

Scientists were set to begin an ambitious mouse-eradication effort when the pandemic hit, delaying the project for a year. In the intervening breeding season, with the vampire mice still running rampant, not one MacGillivrays prion chick an endangered bird that breeds almost exclusively on Gough survived. We lost a whole other breeding season, Ms. Martin said. It meant yet another year with no fledglings.

It is another illustration of humanitys dual roles: The mice are only on Gough because humans took them there. But now we absolutely need humans to cull them, Dr. Bates said.

These kinds of impacts added up all over the world, she said, as local conservation, education and monitoring programs were disrupted or deprived of funding. Spikes in wildlife poaching and persecution, as well as illegal logging and mining, were reported in multiple countries.

Economic insecurity might have driven some of this activity, but experts believe that it was also made possible by lapses in human protection, including reduced staffing in parks and preserves and even an absence of tourists, whose presence might typically discourage illegal activity.

Were not entirely the bad guys, said Mitra Nikoo, a research assistant at the University of Victoria. Were actually doing a lot more good than weve been giving ourselves credit for.

As people resume their normal routines, researchers will continue monitoring wildlife and ecosystems. If an ecosystem that appeared to benefit from humanitys disappearance suffers when people come flooding back, that will provide stronger evidence of our impact.

Its this reversal of the experimental or semi-experimental intervention that scientifically allows really robust insights into how environmental processes work, Dr. Rutz said.

Understanding these mechanisms can help experts design programs and policies that channel our influence more thoughtfully.

If we then strengthen the role as custodians and then continue to regulate pressures, then we can really tilt the role of humans in the environment to an overwhelmingly positive role, said Carlos Duarte, a marine ecologist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.

For example, one team of researchers found that with vacationers not traveling to the Greek island of Zakynthos in the summer of 2020, the loggerhead sea turtles that nest there spent more time close to shore in the warmer waters that are optimal for female egg development than they had in previous years.

The results suggest that tourists are driving sea turtles into cooler waters, slowing egg development and potentially reducing the number of clutches, or batches of eggs, the animals lay during the short nesting season, said Gail Schofield, a conservation ecologist at Queen Mary University of London and an author of the study.

Its a very narrow window of opportunity, she said.

Halting all tourism is not possible, she acknowledged. But designating a stretch of the shoreline as a protected turtle habitat and prohibiting swimming there in the early summer could provide an important refuge for the animals, she said.

When the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve reopened in December 2020, it instituted a strict new cap on daily visitors. It is now closed two days a week, up from one before the pandemic, Dr. Rodgers said.

Other changes could pay dividends, too, experts said: Building wildlife crossings over highways could keep some animals from becoming road kill, while mandating quieter car engines and boat propellers could curb noise pollution on land and at sea.

No one can say anymore that we cant change the whole world in a year, because we can, Dr. Bates said. We did.

Audio produced by Kate Winslett.

Link:
Did Nature Heal During the Pandemic Anthropause? - The New York Times

Human Behavior

Mass shootings and the news media: Catching up to the science of PACEs – ACEs Too High

How do we, as a country, learn about mass shootings and gun violence? The news media. How do we learn about the best approaches to prevent mass shootings and gun violence? The answer should be the news media, but its not. Yet.

People who know about the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) understand that PACEs are at the root of violence. The news media is getting there. In the last couple of years of mass shootings, more articles examined the childhood of the shooter, but more could be done, as I pointed out in essays I wrote after theBuffalo, New York, andUvalde, Texas, shootings.

After last weeks mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, two new threads appeared:

My take on examining shooters families: I think its great to report what happened in a shooters familyas long as a reporter takes a trauma-informed approach. That means reporting without using words of blame, shame or punishmentso a headline that says Are the parents to blame? would change to What happened in that family?

Parents pass on ACEsand positive childhood experiences (PCEs), for that matterto their children. So, if they arent cognizant of their own ACEs, how can they possibly understand their childs ACEs? And where did parents get their ACEs and PCEs? Fromtheirparents and environment. How to break the cycle? Educate families, organizations and communities about PACEs science, and integrate practices and policies based on PACEs science in all organizations in every community.

My take on the online cultures of violence:At the moment, the proposed solutions are to understand the subculture and moderate the content. Its not hard to figure out where different violent spaces are, Emmi Conley, an independent researcher of far-right extremist movements, digital propaganda and online subculturestold NPR. Whats hard is what do you do once you find one, if the red flag still falls within free speech territory. Because currently we have no intervention abilities, we only have law enforcement. I have another idea: It seems to me that these subcultures provide a perfect opportunity to reach out and help youth who are in dire need of a caring adult and counseling. Thats a project worth funding!!

Ongoing issues: Theres the ongoing issue of the news medias obsession with mass shootings, while mostly ignoring aggregate shootings,which receive little attention. And then the dire news of too many incidents of violence that lead news organizations to not cover important stories, and in almost every community, not cover the type of violence that costs communities the most in heartbreak and dollarsfamily violence. This headline in the Washington Post points out that mass shootings may be going the way of family violence coveragetoo little coverage to help a community figure out how to prevent the violence.There are too many mass shootings for the U.S. media to cover: News organizations must make agonizing decisions about which shootings deserve on-the-ground reporting, and for how long.

Theres a more contextual, solution-oriented way to cover crime and violence. First, incorporate violence coverage into a health section. Then:

Here are a few thoughts about where we are now. (Make a note of the next few graphs. You might be surprised.)

Violence prevention proponents note that the challenge to change attitudes toward violenceto convince Americans that violence is predictable and preventableis no different from the attitudes public health experts faced when they suggested in the 1950s that stopping smoking would reduce lung cancer rates and in the 1960s that wearing seat belts and not driving under the influence of alcohol would reduce automobile deaths and injuries.

For example, until the 1960s, traffic deaths and injuries were typically blamed on the nut behind the wheel. Prevention approaches were limited to admonitions to drive safely. Then, public health experts, law enforcement agencies, transportation departments, injury control scientists, consumer advocates, public policy makers and vehicle manufacturers began looking at auto deaths and injuries as a public health issue. Instead of studying only how the human factor contributed to crashes, they also investigated the vehicle and the environment. In 1975, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began accumulating information through its Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS). FARS uses police records and death certificates to accumulate data on the driver (age, sex, blood alcohol level, if wearing seatbelt), the vehicle (vehicle identification number that reveals make, manufacturer and product characteristics) and the environment (weather, location and roadway conditions). To recommend specific safety improvements, researchers used FARS data to identify unsafe conditions in driver behavior, vehicles and the environment.

As a result, over the last 30 years and often amid great controversy, car manufacturers added collapsible steering columns, seat belts, shoulder harnesses, roll bars, padded dashboards, anti-lock braking systems, airbags and safety glass to the vehicles they made. States passed laws requiring seat belts for all riders and car seats for young children, and they created stiff penalties for people driving under the influence of alcohol. Highway engineers improved the safety of roadways and intersections. If the death rate from auto crashes had remained the same as it was 30 years ago, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people would be dying annually on the nations highways compared with the 40,000 who now die in highway crashes.

When public health researchers began identifying the risk factors that contribute to auto crashes, journalists began reporting breaking news of traffic injuries and fatalities differently. They began including the type of car and its manufacturer, whether people were driving drunk or wearing seatbelts, the conditions of the road or intersection, and whether stop lights were functioning or stop signs were in place. Feature articles focused on automobile safety design, laws to prevent drinking and driving, vehicle recalls to correct safety problems and court cases that addressed auto safety issues.

Similarly, since the 1980s, hundreds of national, state and local violence prevention research projects and programs have emerged. Physicians, public health experts, epidemiologists and social scientists are using the public health model to study violence. They analyze the relationship among the person who is killed or injured, the weapon and the physical, economic and social environments in which violence occurs. In 1983, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiated a program to study the causes of violence and founded the Center for Injury Control and Prevention. In 1984, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared that violence was as much a public health issue for todays physicians as smallpox was for the medical community in previous generations.

Identifying the risk factors of violence is a complex undertaking. There are many different types of violenceviolence in which women, children, the elderly and men are injured and killed in their homes by family members; gang violence; dating violence; violence by acquaintances; violence by strangers; etc. Risk factors vary with different types of violence and often from community to community. Some of the risk factors that have been identified as contributing to high levels of the many types of violence include: poverty, racial segregation and discrimination, unemployment, the ready availability of alcohol, the ready availability of firearms, the portrayal of violence in the media, being male, being young, a lack of education in child rearing, childhood exposure to lead, abuse as a child, witnessing violent acts in the home or neighborhood, the belief in male dominance over females and isolation of the nuclear family.

Violence is a difficult epidemic to understand and control because no one factorelimination or redesign of guns, decrease in availability of alcohol or reduction of media violencewill prevent all violence. Each type of violence in a community results from a unique combination of social, cultural, biological and economic risk factors and thus requires a unique combination of preventive measures. Therefore, prevention approaches must involve a unique combination of people who attempt to solve the problem: doctors, researchers, community organizers, lawmakers, police officers, judges, social workers, teachers, parents and citizens.

Traditionally, journalists have reported violent incidents as only a law enforcement and criminal justice issue. But now that an epidemiological approach to violence has been established, the media can expand their reporting of violencein breaking news as well as featuresto identify factors that contribute to violence.

_______________

I wrote the eight paragraphs above in 1997.(Reporting on Violence, a handbook for journalists.) Thats 25 years ago! And I wasnt the first to make these points.

Over those last 25 years, the main development that has changed our understanding of violenceand one that is actually leading to remarkable solutionsis theCDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which was published in 1998 and opened the door to our understanding of why humans do what they do. Since then, weve learned that the roots of violence and being a victim of violence are the same roots that lead to chronic disease, mental illness, and economic problems; they lie in the science of positive and adverse childhood experiences. This knowledge has provided a new mindset on how to change human behaviorcriminal, unhealthy or unwanted behavior. This mindset changes a traditional approach of using practices and policies based on blame, shame and punishment to an approach that uses practices and policies grounded in understanding, nurturing and healing. (SeePACEs science 101for more details about the science as well as links to articles about people who are using it.)

If reporters or editors want some ideas on how to provide more context in crime reporting (with a deeper understanding of PACEs science),send them here.

____________________

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Human Behavior

Dr. Mark Goulston on why Democrats keep losing: They’re afraid of their own anger – Salon

In a series of recent decisions that have taken away women's reproductive rights and freedoms, given guns more protection than human lives, neutered the federal government's power to protect the environment in a moment of global climate disaster and further dissolved the separation of church and state, the radical right-wing justices on the Supreme Court are attempting to force American society back to the Gilded Age if not before.

As a practical matter, the new-old America that the Supreme Court is serving as a wicked midwife for will be a society where women, Black and brown people, gays and lesbians, and other marginalized groups will have their basic civil and human rights greatly reduced, if not stripped away altogether.

This is a judicial coup by a nakedly partisan institution that is publicly collaborating with the Republican-fascist movement to end America's multiracial, pluralist democracy. To this point, the response of Democratic leaders, including President Biden, has been pathetically, pitiably, embarrassingly weak.

RELATED:The Joe Biden reality show: Most stage-managed presidency in history keeps undermining itself

Shortly after the Supreme Court issued its rulingin the Dobbs case that reversed the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, House Democrats responded by singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps.

Two weeks later, the Biden administration finally responded to the court's evisceration of reproductive rights and freedoms by issuing an executive order that enhances some protections for women seeking reproductive health services as well as their medical providers. The executive order is intended to "protect access to medication abortion," emergency medical care for pregnant people and contraception. It mandates both the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services to defend the rights of women who need to travel across state lines to access reproductive health care and to ensure that those who experience pregnancy-related medical emergencies can access the care they need, no matter where they are in the country.

It had been clear for at least two months how the Supreme Court would rule in the Dobbs case; nothing about this decision came as a surprise. Yet for some reason, the Biden administration took two weeks to respond. When it finally did so, as Claire Lampen writes at the Cut, Biden's response was wholly insufficient to the challenge. Republicans are openly pursuing "new laws that penalize not just providers but also patients, opening them up to surveillance by their neighbors ... and by data brokers," Lampen notes, as in Missouri's attempt "to incentivize private citizens to report people they suspect of crossing state lines" to terminate a pregnancy. Some legislators have already "proposed criminally charging patients directly," and sincerely intend to "pass a federal abortion ban, reconsider gay marriage, scrap the right to birth control."

Joe Biden continues to oppose expanding the Supreme Court in order to neutralize its radical right-wing justices, and has declined to explore allowing access to abortion and other reproductive health services on federal land, including military bases. He now says he supports a Senate filibuster "carve-out" on the issue of reproductive rights, but has done nothing to make that happen.In a statement to the Washington Post on Saturday, the Biden administration even suggested that those who want a more robust defense of women's reproductive rights and freedoms are "out of step" with "the mainstream of the Democratic Party."

Have today's Democrats forgotten how to fight? Or are they refusing to do so because too many of them are beholden to the same moneyed interests that also back the Republican-fascists and the "conservative" movement? Whatever the explanation, at a moment when America desperately needs spirited defenders of democracy, the Democratic Party's leaders are acting demoralized, with little fighting spirit.

In a recent essay at Medium, Dr. Mark Goulston, a leading psychiatrist, former FBI hostage negotiation trainer and the author of the bestsellers "Just Listen" and "Talking to 'Crazy,'" offers a provocative explanation for the Democratic Party's weakness. He argues that Democrats are "highly conflict avoidant" and that such a temperament has made them "mincemeat to the vast majority of the GOP who is allegiant to Donald Trump."

In my recent conversation with Goulston, he expanded on this analysis, arguing that Democrats keep losing to the Republicans because they refuse to speak passionately, clearly and in declarative terms to the American people. He warns that Republicans, especially Trump loyalists, are bullies who embrace and welcome conflict, and that Democrats do not fight back effectively because they refuse to acknowledge the reality that bullies must be confronted and cannot be negotiated with or defeated with rational arguments. Goulston further explains that Trump's followers remain loyal to him precisely because of his antisocial and anti-human behavior, not despite it.

Goulston also explains that many members of America's political class and the news media are naive or in denial about the nature of human evil, and therefore continue to express shock and surprise at each new revelation about the obvious crimes of the Trump regime.At the end of this conversation Goulston shares the advice he would give to Biden and other Democratic leaders about how to break their pattern of self-defeating behavior and formulate a winning plan to defeat the Republicans and preserve American democracy.

American society is experiencing multiple crises at once. Democracy is in crisis, and fascism is in the ascendancy. The pandemic has killed more than a million people in this country. There is extreme social inequality. There are mass shootings. The country is in a state of perennial grief and mourning but with no real catharsis or reckoning. It feels like America is on the verge of self-destruction, a form of societal and political suicide. How are you making sense of all this?

What you are describing is not just one moment of "suicidality." There are actually several moments or a prolonged period of time where people who feel suicidal form psychological adhesions to death as a way to take away their pain. It's not a psychological attachment, because a person can reason through that. A psychological adhesion is different: A person tucks that in their back pocket, so to speak. When you get slightly past the impulse, you reassure everybody: "I'm fine." But in your back pocket is this option, this exit strategy, this permanent solution to a temporary problem that you can always exercise if things get really bad. People don't talk about it because they don't want to scare others.

People who are depressed and suicidal feelhelpless, powerless, useless, worthless, meaningless and purposeless. It appears pointless to go on. We are seeing this on a societal level.

People who are really depressed and suicidal feel despair at the end. If you break down the word despair, it means "unpaired." Unpaired with the future, hopeless. Unpaired with the ability to get out of the challenging situation. You feel helpless, powerless, useless, worthless, meaningless and purposeless. When those feelings are all lined up like some dark one-armed slot machine, it appears pointless to go on. Death is viewed as a way to take the pain away. We are seeing this on a societal level.

America is also in the midst of a moral crisis. Fascism is a form of evil. What Trumpism has wrought and encouraged is fundamentally evil, yet the country's leaders and the larger political and news media class appear terrified of using the appropriate moral language.

It is important to identify evil at the earliest opportunity and then to stop it. You have to confront and stop evil in order to protect the people that you care about. You also need to identify evil in order to escape it. Most people we encounter are not evil. We are lucky in that way. But evil people do in fact exist. Denial of that fact is not healthy.

As a clinician, when you look at Donald Trump and his followers, what do you see?

The people that have trouble with conflict are not bullies. Bullies like to stir up conflict. Such people can get the best of us not only through their bullying behavior but also through their whining and excuse-making behavior. They can outrage us with their behavior. But if we are the type of person who is uncomfortable becoming enraged, then we will do everything we can to suppress our desire to confront that bully, to fight back, to stand up to them in a strong way.

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As soon as the bully sees that we are restraining ourselves, then they push us harder from being outraged to turning that anger inward through a dynamic I call "in-rage." Most people are so uncomfortable with their anger and rage they use almost all their energy to keep a lid on their feelings. Many Democrats, and other rational-minded people more generally, believe in respectful discourse. Those feelings of rage, and how the bully behaves, neuters and neutralizes them.

Here is how to confront a bully. Step one, identify those bullies in your life. Step two, never expect them to act differently when you talk with them. Never expect them to be decent because that's not who they are. Step three, always hold a bit of yourself back so that you're not off balance if the bully tries to provoke you. Finally, when the bully tries to provoke you, look clearly in their eyes. Stare at them firmly.

Don't try to intimidate them, but hold their gaze. By doing that you are communicating to the bully: "You know and I know what you just did and it didn't work." When you communicate that in a measured way, the bully is going to get more agitated. You can then try to engage the bully in a reasonable way or decide to disengage. Tell the bully, "If what you have to say is important, you need to talk to me instead of at me." You just hold your ground from there.

Why are so many members of America's political class and the mainstream media repeatedly "shocked" and "stunned" by Donald Trump's antisocial and anti-human behavior? This is a common reaction to the "revelations" about Jan. 6 and the violence at the Capitol, including Trump wishing death on Mike Pence. Trump has behaved this way for most if not all of his public life. If a person keeps being shocked by obvious behavior, what does that reveal about their personality defects? Are they really shocked, or are they just pretending?

The reason they're shocked is because a person cannot be partially sociopathic or narcissistic. It's a slippery road when you allow sociopaths or narcissists to ride over you unchecked. The denial, and giving such people the benefit of the doubt, just encourages them.

People on the left are afraid to acknowledge the dark parts of their personalities, such as anger and rage. Therefore, they deny to themselves that Donald Trump and other sociopaths and narcissists are dangerous.

People on the left, the Democrats especially, are also afraid to acknowledge the dark parts of their personalities, such as anger and rage. Such feelings fill them with shame. Therefore, they deny to themselves that Donald Trump and other such sociopaths and narcissists are so dangerous. Leading Democrats such as Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi need to learn to talk to the public in a very authoritative way. They smile and talk so rationally. They need to show some emotion and passion.

One of the reasons I believe Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton is that Donald Trump was declarative, and Hillary was explanatory. Hillary Clinton was showing the American people that she was really prepared for the responsibilities of being president of the United States. In an effort to be convincing, she wasn't compelling. Donald Trump was declarative, which meant you knew where he stood. You might not have agreed with him. But Trump was able to hook his base precisely because of how declarative he was, and is, in his speech.

Trump was also being a type of role model for his followers. He showed them that you don't have to sit on your anger and suppress it. You can act on it. Why keep in all that built-up frustration? Trump told his followers, "Let's go get even with whoever's bothering us! Join me, because we could all shoot someone in Times Square and still get elected! Hey, it's fun!"

Ultimately, Trump appeared on the stage and let the genie out of the bottle as a role model for unsuppressed and unrepressed thoughts and feelings. Many Americans of a certain background and political orientation who have a buildup of frustration and anger psychologically adhered themselves to Donald Trump. This is not a mere attachment. It is a psychological adhesion, which explains why they remain so loyal to him.

When the Supreme Court announced that it was taking away women's reproductive rights and freedoms, leading Democrats went outside on the Capitol steps and started singing. Nancy Pelosi read a poem. It was one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen.How do the Democratic Party's leaders see the world? Why would they default to that kind of pitiful behavior and think that's how you fight back against a bully?

Maybe they were singing to keep themselves from forcefully responding to the Republicans. They were trying to suppress their rage. It may also be that those Democrats were singing hymns to calm themselves down because they were being triggered, and they realized that it is dangerous to escalate with a sociopath or narcissist.

The latter are much more comfortable going off the cliff than most people are. They're going to push you to the limits of what you can tolerate emotionally. A sociopath or narcissist is not afraid of being outrageous. If it is your nature to be uncomfortable with becoming enraged, you're going to want to steer away from those feelings.

By comparison, the Republicans and Trump's other followers love becoming outraged. They use a vocabulary full of rageful words. They love that Trump is disrespectful to others, that he calls his enemies and people he dislikes names. Trump is getting his feelings off of his chest. His followers love that. Meanwhile, the Democrats just repress and suppress their dark feelings.

What do the Republicans and the larger right-wing movement understand about emotion that the Democrats do not?

Many Republicans, especially the likes of a Ted Cruz or Mitch McConnell, don't care about contradicting themselves. To them, it doesn't matter what they say. They're aligning themselves with who they perceive to be the person in power in this case, Donald Trump because they don't want to trigger his ire and they don't want to lose their own followers.

I'm guessing that a lot of the Republicans were raised by decent parents, and at least when they were children they were taught that certain values and ethics and morality were important. But being a politician became more important than those values. "Politician" became the core identity that supersedes other things.

In your recent article at Medium, you described the Democrats as being "highly conflict avoidant," and said that they deal with conflict in an unhealthy way, which helps explain why the Republicans and Trumpists are rolling over them. How does this unhealthy behavior manifest itself on a day-to-day basis?

They are hiding their legitimate outrage and other feelings under a mask of civility. They appear neutered in the eyes of the public because they are not expressing healthy, aggressive feelings. When someone who is neutered goes up against someone who is outrageous in their behavior, the neutered person loses.

If you had the opportunity to speak with President Biden in private what would you say to him?

I would ask him, "What is really going on?" I would keep pushing him on this question to get at the real answer. At some point Biden would say, "I'm a decent person but I am really angry at Trump and want him to get his comeuppance." Biden could never say that in public because it would be taken out of context.

Today's Democrats appear to be obsessed with compromise and finding an acceptable middle ground with the Republicans. But the Republicans only care about winning and power and are now openly willing to embrace fascism, political violence, white supremacy and other anti-democratic and anti-human values. In essence, this is an abusive relationship on a national scale and the Democrats are content to keep being abused. How can they break this cycle?

If I was consulting for the Democratic Party's leadership, I would ask them, "What is your desired outcome?" They might say, "Well, the desired outcome is that we find a way to get the Republicans and Trump to listen to reason and that would in turn break their cult."

I would continue by asking them, "What's the specific approach that you're taking that you believe will get Trump's followers away from his cult?" I would continue pushing them by asking, "Do you actually believe that what you just said would work?"

I would get the Democrats to agree that their current approach is flawed and doomed to failure. Perhaps that would help them open up and admit that they don't know what else to do.

I would get the Democrats to agree that their current approach is flawed and doomed to failure. Perhaps that would help them open up and admit that they don't know what else to do. I would continue pressing them by asking, "What has been your success rate these last four or so years?" In that moment, perhaps the Democratic Party's leadership could have some type of realization or epiphany and come up with a better plan.

You can't convince another person of their flawed approach to decision-making or life more generally. You have to get them to a point of self-discovery. Brainstorming with them is helpful too. "Good, now you're being open. Let's be open and see what might work. What do we know about these other kinds of personalities? What do we know about bullies?"

The Democratic Party's leaders need to have a moment where they realize: "We have to find a way to sound really angry, pissed off and insulted by Donald Trump and his followers. We have to do it a way so that whoever watches us knows that we're pissed off in no uncertain terms. We can't act like we are trying to sugarcoat our anger." That is how the Democrats can start to win.

Read more on Donald Trump and America's mental health:

Originally posted here:
Dr. Mark Goulston on why Democrats keep losing: They're afraid of their own anger - Salon

Anatomy

The anatomy of a rumor: Fact checking abortion claims – The Dickinson Press

DICKINSON Dr. Thomas Arnold is a practicing gynecologist and obstetrician at CHI St. Alexius Health in Dickinson who also volunteers at Connect Medical Clinic. Arnold earned his degree from the Uiversity of North Dakota, School of Medicine, in 1984 and has been a practicing OBGYN for decades.

Arnold explained how an ectopic pregnancy occurs, noting that it is defined as those rare instances when a fertilized egg grows outside the uterus usually in the fallopian tubes. He said that both legally and medically, this is completely different from an abortion.

Ectopic pregnancies most commonly occur in the fallopian tubes, and they can be life threatening to the mother because of rupture and bleeding that can occur. They're not pregnancies that can be sustained in the woman's body. The fallopian tubes cannot accommodate a pregnancy like that, Arnold said. If you have a patient that has an ectopic pregnancy, that can be managed within the environment of the Catholic Health System.

Public commons photo

He explained the distinction between an elective abortion and the termination of a non-viable pregnancy and how the two are widely recognized throughout the medical community.

Colleagues of mine, physicians and medical personnel in general, consider an abortion to be the termination of a live pregnancy. I just read an article about someone who had a fetal demise about seven months into the pregnancy and she was told that if if they intervene that it was an abortion. Well, I don't think most medical professionals will look at management of a fetal demise, where you have a baby that's non-viable, as an abortion, he said.

Among those who have spread misinformation on this topic, one of the most seemingly credible sources was Daily Beast Columnist Wajahat Ali. He incorrectly conflated abortion with ectopic pregnancies and further spread a commonly misunderstood legal liability concern to his nearly 300,000 followers on social media both assertions being incorrect.

Do I abort this ectopic pregnancy to literally save my life or do I go to jail? Question women in America now have to ask, Ali stated in a viral tweet. Also, doctors who have taken an Oath to save lives now have to risk jail as well. It's a mess.

Reuters reports that only abortionists, those who perform clandestine abortions, or pharmacists who illegally distribute abortion inducing pills to end life in the womb can suffer prosecution under these state laws. Thirteen states, including North Dakota, have trigger laws that subsequently banned abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned. The states trigger law took effect on June 28, as the 2007 statute behind it included a 30-day waiting period after Roe being struck down.

Five other states had statutory abortion bans prior to 1973 that now go back into effect.

Of all 18 states, each has an exception to allow procedures to terminate pregnancies in the event the mothers life is in danger. No state penalizes women who seek abortions, and anti-abortion activist groups overwhelmingly oppose prosecuting said women.

Prominent New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also made misleading claims about reproductive health care in a viral Instagram video to her millions of followers.

A bunch of men who are very ignorant about medicine, biology, rape culture and the misogyny that they were raised in, including legal liability and how it factors in with the medical field people who are ignorant to all of that are the ones that are writing these laws, Ocasio-Cortez argued in an Instagram video. "Some of them were even written in the 1800s So dont tell me that people in the 1800s knew what an ectopic pregnancy was."

Despite the seemingly primitive medical technology of the era, not only were medical professionals impressively able to identify ectopic pregnancies, but by the final decades of that century they were even treating them.

In 1883 British surgeon Robert Lawson Tait performed the first successful procedure terminating an ectopic pregnancy, a condition which then had a 60% mortality rate. Tait lost only two of the 42 women he performed this surgery on.

Miscarriages have also been a hot topic of misinformation in light of some states moving to bans on abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. In a June 24 Facebook post , Lillian Jones, a Democratic NPL nominated candidate for state house in District 41, shared her opposition to the Dobbs v. Jackson decision.

I lost an unexpected child to miscarriage and endured a procedure that saved my life. A womans Constitutional right to choose just got struck down, along with a familys right to make decisions regarding health and household composition, Jones said in the post, implying that such procedures may no longer be available to women who need them.

CHI St. Alexius, an ardently "pro-life institution of the Catholic church," has been providing surgery and medication to treat miscarriages nearly since its inception, and Arnold said they will continue to do so. As previously explained by Arnold, no abortion ban in any state hinders doctors from treating miscarriages.

Arnold categorized a miscarriage as a medical condition that is more common than most people realize, and most often occurs before the woman realizes shes pregnant.

Miscarriages are most often due to a genetic abnormality, where the pregnancy progresses inside the uterus to a certain gestational stage. Then for reasons we don't always find out, the pregnancy becomes non-viable, he said. The body perceives this at some point. It will usually respond by trying to eliminate the pregnancy by contracting, bleeding and passing over the tissue naturally. That's not a perfect system however, and in some cases, the bleeding and cramping can be severe enough where women will come into the clinic or the emergency room for a surgical evacuation of the uterus.

He reiterated that his and most definitions of abortion only include viable pregnancies.

Most people will say the difference between a miscarriage and a termination or an abortion would be that one is a non-viable pregnancy and the other is a viable pregnancy, Arnold said.

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The anatomy of a rumor: Fact checking abortion claims - The Dickinson Press

Biochemistry

UA Researchers Develop Way to Test Water for Metal Pollutants – The University of Alabama

Research involving The University of Alabama created an easier way to detect harmful levels of heavy metals in water, which could help improve human health by boosting detection efforts by regulatory agencies, water utilities and commercial fishing.

Dr. Marco Bonizzoni

The new analytical method for detecting harmful levels of heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury and lead was created by combining chemical array sensing methods developed at UA with polymer synthesis capabilities at the University of Southern Mississippi, according to findings recently published in Advanced Functional Materials.

The work is part of a larger, multiyear collaboration led by the University of Mississippi and supported by the National Science Foundation to develop advanced polymer-based, selective sensing technologies for detecting and analyzing pollutants in the coastal aquatic ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico, which host important fisheries, aquaculture, trading ports, and off-shore oil exploration and production industries.

The new method proved to be unusually robust and sensitive even in complex and challenging samples, down to the extremely low concentrations relevant for environmental monitoring applications in fresh- and saltwater, said Dr. Marco Bonizzoni, UA associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

Our method for these analyses uses less complex instrumentation, yet achieves sensitivity similar to established lab-based standard techniques, Bonizzoni said. Additionally, our system is simpler and more rugged than existing techniques, potentially opening the path towards development of a portable device for and point-of-sampling measurements.

At low levels, heavy metals are ubiquitous in the environment and some are essential nutrients for the ecosystem. At increased levels, mostly from human intervention, they threaten human, animal and ecosystem health. Exposure to heavy metals has been linked to neurological disease, organ failure and cancer.

Methods for their rapid and simple detection are a scientific and technological priority. Water utilities regularly monitor these potential contaminants in municipal water. Government regulatory agencies track heavy metals in waters as a proxy for potential contamination of marine life such as fish sold for consumption.

Bonizzoni, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and his group created a simple method for detecting harmful levels of heavy metals in water.

Current methods require lugging water samples taken on location back to a lab for analysis, which is time consuming and requires additional measures to ensure the sample isnt contaminated. The new method could simplify this process greatly by allowing for direct on-site measurements.

For now, researchers demonstrated they can simplify analysis by testing samples taken from the site of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in the Gulf, gathered by a group led by Dr. Alan Shillerfrom Southern Mississippi. The site near the destroyed oil rig and subsequent massive oil spill into the ocean in 2010 released heavy metals into the environment.

Former UA graduate student Dr. Michael Ihde, now a faculty member at Williams College, led the Bonizzoni groups efforts to combine their method for using an array of receptors in a chemical sensor with the polymer synthesis capabilities from a group led by Dr. Jason Azoulay at Southern Mississippi and his graduate student Joshua Tropp.

Researchers prepared bright fluorene-based light-emitting charged polymers with appended metal binding groups, and studied their interactions with metal pollutants, developing methods for their ultrasensitive detection and discrimination.

Through the collaboration, we made new polymers, we combined them in a physical sensing system, and we measured complex and challenging samples with it, Bonizzoni said.

After demonstrating this proof of principle, the research team will focus on streamlining the procedure to fit inside a portable sensing system that could be operated by most anyone as a self-contained testing device deployed on a boat or, possibly, on a buoy that passively and continuously monitors the water; however, that future is several steps away.

Contact

Adam Jones, UA communications, 205-348-4328, adam.jones@ua.edu

The University of Alabama, part of The University of Alabama System, is the states flagship university. UA shapes a better world through its teaching, research and service. With a global reputation for excellence, UA provides an inclusive, forward-thinking environment and nearly 200 degree programs on a beautiful, student-centered campus. A leader in cutting-edge research, UA advances discovery, creative inquiry and knowledge through more than 30 research centers. As the states largest higher education institution, UA drives economic growth in Alabama and beyond.

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UA Researchers Develop Way to Test Water for Metal Pollutants - The University of Alabama

Genetics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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