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Is the increased risk of death due to alcohol intake greater for women or men?

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

Contact: Vicki Cohn vochn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, April 9, 2014The increased risk of death associated with alcohol intake is not the same for men and women. A study that compared the amount of alcohol consumed and death from all causes among nearly 2.5 million women and men showed that the differences between the sexes became greater as alcohol intake increased, as described in an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh.

In the article "Effect of Drinking on All-Cause Mortality in Women Compared with Men: A Meta-Analysis," Chao Wang and coauthors, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical Sciences (Beijing, China), modeled the relationship between the dose of alcohol consumed and the risk of death, comparing the results for drinkers versus non-drinkers and among male and female drinkers. Females had an increased rate of all-cause mortality conferred by drinking compared with males, especially in heavy drinkers.

"While alcoholism is more common in men than women, female drinkers face greater risks to their health compared with male drinkers," says Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Women's Health, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA, and President of the Academy of Women's Health.

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About the Journal

Journal of Women's Health, published monthly, is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women. The Journal covers the latest advances and clinical applications of new diagnostic procedures and therapeutic protocols for the prevention and management of women's healthcare issues. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. Journal of Women's Health is the official journal of the Academy of Women's Health and the Society for Women's Health Research.

About the Academy

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Is the increased risk of death due to alcohol intake greater for women or men?

Genetic circuits: Bacterial ‘FM radio’ created

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Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

While their application may be inspired by electronics, the UC San Diego scientists caution in their paper against what they see as increasing "metaphorization" of engineering biology.

"We explicitly make the point that since biology is often too intertwined to engineer in the way we are accustomed in electronics, we must deal directly with bidirectional coupling and quantitatively understand its effects using computational models," explained Prindle. "It's important to find the right dose of inspiration from engineering concepts while making sure you aren't being too reliant on your engineering metaphors."

Enabling this breakthrough is the development of an intracellular wiring mechanism that enables rapid transmission of protein signals between the individual modules. The new wiring mechanism was inspired by a previous study in the lab on the bacterial stress response. It reduces the time lags that develop as a consequence of using proteins to activate or repress genes.

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Genetic circuits: Bacterial 'FM radio' created

UC San Diego researchers develop bacterial ‘FM radio’

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

Contact: Kim McDonald kmcdonald@ucsd.edu 858-534-7572 University of California - San Diego

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded, and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

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UC San Diego researchers develop bacterial 'FM radio'

Facilities Engineering Supervisor Job

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Req ID: 6641

Position Summary:

This position will supervise approximately (10-11) employees. This will include Facility Engineers and support Technicians. The successful candidate will interface with Marathon employees, contractor employees and vendors to optimize facility design, maximize production rates, and focus on optimization to meet reliability goals. Effective teamwork is required by the Engineering Staff as information is gathered and communicated between field personnel and other team members. Work being performed by the engineering staff includes performing engineering studies, evaluations, budget preparation, project engineering/management, troubleshooting, and support to production operations. The Bakken program is ongoing and fast paced. Facility Engineering work will need to be completed and commissioned to meet the drilling development program along with maintaining existing production. A demonstrated commitment to HES standards and policies is a must for the candidate filling this position.

Essential Functions:

Prerequisites:

EDUCATION: Bachelors Degree required, Engineering focus

EXPERIENCE: 10+ years in construction, facility design, and maintenance; project planning experience (preferred)

COMPUTER: MS Office Suite; Microsoft Project or Primavera; TOW; COGZ;

PROFICIENCY: ACAD; KMS (management of change); HYSYS (would be a plus)

COMMUNICATION: Excellent oral and written communication, teamwork, and planning & organization skills

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Facilities Engineering Supervisor Job

Behavior change startup Omada Health wins over Andreessen Horowitz in $23M Series B

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Health-tech startup Omada Health promises to help people with health issues change their behavior. And its starting out with a programtohelp diabetes sufferers.

Itis a digital therapeutic, and they deliver weight loss over an Internet connection, Balaji S. Srinivasan, a partner at investorAndreesen Horowitz,toldVentureBeat in an interview.

The company, whichis announcing a hefty $23 million in new funding today,takes landmark behavioral science research and turns it into programs that use various digital technologies to help people who are at risk for or suffering froma particular health issue.

Its first program, named Prevent, aims to help people at risk of Type II diabetes through weight loss, a proven way to prevent or reverse the diseasein many cases.

The 16-week program is based on the Center for Disease Controls National Diabetes Prevention program, and consists of an online portal as well as a digital scale containinga cell chip (meaning it doesnt need to be connected to Wi-Fi). At the beginning of the program, participants are put into cohorts of 12 or so peers and are given a health coach. They receive resources, advice, and notifications through the online portal and app, and use the digital scale to report their weight regularly.

The company is using software to put people out of their bad habits and put them in a group with good habits, saidSrinivasan.

Using technology to apply behavioral science on a large scale is really at the core of Omada Health. And thats not an easy challenge, according to Omada chief executive Sean Duffy. If you think of all the ingredients you need to really help someone, its really hard to scale up face-to-face programs for the millions of people that need them, he said in an interview with VentureBeat.

The company has already been testing its Prevent program with partnering organizations such as hospitals and health insurance providers, but it plans to use its new funding to double down on its sales to make the program available more widely, as well as to begin working on some potential future health areas, though it has yet to pick its next one.

Andreesen Horowitz led this second round of funding for Omada, with Kaiser Permanente Ventures and existing investors such as U.S. Venture Partners and The Vertical Group also chipping in. Srinivasan will be joining the companys board.

This deal is actually Andreesen Horowitzs first major investment in a health-tech company, according to both Duffy and Srinivasan.

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Behavior change startup Omada Health wins over Andreessen Horowitz in $23M Series B

UCLA/RAND community research team win prestigious translational science award

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

Contact: Kim Irwin kirwin@mednet.ucla.edu 310-794-2262 University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences

A team of community leaders and researchers from UCLA and RAND has been awarded the 2014 Joint Team Science Award in recognition of a 10-year effort to conduct community engaged, population-based translational science to improve care for depression in low-income areas.

The Joint Team Science Award, given by the Association for Clinical and Translational Science and the American Federation for Medical Research, was established to acknowledge the growing importance of interdisciplinary teams to translate research discoveries into clinical applications to achieve public health impact. The award will be presented on April 10, 2014, at the association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

The UCLA/RAND and community translational research team included interdisciplinary scientists and area stakeholders from South Los Angeles, downtown L.A. and Hollywood working in partnership, contributing expertise to develop a collaborative approach to science development and implementation, as well as an evidence basis for the added value of community engagement and partnership.

The team included the National Institute for Mental Health (NIHM), the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and 40 other health and advocacy agencies, including Healthy African American Families II, QueenCare Health and Faith Partnership and Behavioral Health Services. More than 100 academic and community leaders, such as ministers and representatives from child welfare agencies, barbershops and beauty salons, food banks and homeless shelters, participated in the project, said principal investigator Dr. Kenneth Wells, a senior scientist at RAND and a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

"It's absolutely wonderful to get an award that recognizes the efforts of so many people. It really does take a village to affect change," said Wells, who also is a professor-in-residence in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. "We showed that with community leaders and scientists working together we can improve mental and physical health and reduce homelessness, as well as provide relief for those suffering from depression."

Participating scientist Dr. Bowen Chung, an assistant professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and an adjunct scientist at RAND, said the study on depression may be the first ever to show community engagement can provide "measurable added value."

"We were able to show that high quality science and high quality community engagement are not mutually exclusive endeavors," Chung said. "We were also able to show that, when everyone in a community works together to address a health issue like depression, we can learn how to develop new effective and innovative approaches to provide support for people with depression that healthcare systems and doctors could never develop by themselves."

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UCLA/RAND community research team win prestigious translational science award

Dr. Andrew Bostom — Author and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School – Video

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Dr. Andrew Bostom -- Author and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School
Dr. Andrew Bostom -- American author and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School joins Steve to discuss his new book, "Iran #39;s Fina...

By: NewsmaxTV

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Dr. Andrew Bostom -- Author and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School - Video

"The Immortality of the Soul in Japan’s Christian Century (1549-1650)" (Ken Nejime) – Video

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"The Immortality of the Soul in Japan #39;s Christian Century (1549-1650)" (Ken Nejime)
Session: "Japan #39;s Christian Century (1549-1650)" Sponsor: Japanese Association for Renaissance Studies Renaissance Society of America (New York, March 29, 2014)

By: Marsilio Ficino

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"The Immortality of the Soul in Japan's Christian Century (1549-1650)" (Ken Nejime) - Video

Instant chemistry for stars of comedy revenge romp ‘The Other Woman’ – cinema – Video

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Instant chemistry for stars of comedy revenge romp #39;The Other Woman #39; - cinema
Three women plot revenge on one man in #39;The Other Woman #39;. Camaron Diaz stars in the comedy as a woman who finds out her boyfriend is married. She meets the w...

By: euronews (in English)

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Instant chemistry for stars of comedy revenge romp 'The Other Woman' - cinema - Video