Author Archives: ev1
How Behavioral Science Can Help Truth Triumph Over Baseless Accusations – Huffington Post
Regardless of their political affiliation, most who follow politics in any depth easily dismissed Donald Trumps series of grave Twitter accusations on March 4 that Barack Obama ordered Trump Tower wiretapped before the 2016 election. Trump offered no evidence for his wiretapping claims, but instead used inflammatory language such as calling Obama sick and bad, and requested that Congress conduct an investigation into the Obama administration.
Behavioral science suggests that despite Trump offering no substantive facts for his claim, the mainstream medias current coverage will get him what he craves. Fortunately, we can use the same research to reframe the narrative to help truth trump Trumps evidence-free accusations.
To understand why current coverage helps Trump get what he wants, lets consider some typical examples of how the accusations have been covered so far. CNNs story described in the first sentence how Trump made a stunning claim about the wiretapping, and added that he did not offer any evidence. Next, the story featured 3 screenshots of Trumps tweets, and a breakdown of the claims. Following that, the article continued with rebuttals of Trumps claims by Obamas spokesperson and US intelligence officials, and then went into an analysis of how the tweets are representative of Trumps wild and often false accusations.
The article on this topic by AP News, republished in many local newspapers and used by radio and TV stations, also started by describing Trumps startling allegation of abuse of power, and noted that it was offered without evidence. The story continued with Obamas denial of the claim, and then went into the details of Trumps accusations, followed by a broader analysis of Trumps frequent allegations backed by alternative facts.
These articles offered sophisticated political observers the appropriate context for Trumps evidence-free accusations in the analytic part of each piece. Yet research on news consumption shows that most people dont usually read the analysis. Only 41% of Americans go beyond simply skimming the headline, and, among these few, most only go into the first or second paragraph.
So what do the 6 in 10 who only read headlines get from the AP News headline: Trump Accuses Obama of Tapping His Phones, Cites No Evidence, and from the CNN headline White House Requests Congress Investigate Whether Obama Administration Abused Power? What do most of the rest get from the CNN story that starts with a thorough description of Trumps accusations?
Those who have a strong partisan perspective will likely not change their opinions, due to what psychologists term confirmation bias, the tendency to misinterpret new information in light of our current beliefs as opposed to objective facts. However, research shows that many moderates and independents, who do not suffer from confirmation bias but are not sophisticated political observers, will also likely be swayed to believe Trumps claims.
Their engagement with the headline and the initial paragraphs, which focus on the accusations by Trump, will cause them to experience anchoring. This well-established reasoning error results from the way in which we process information we first encounter about a topic. That initial information influences the entirety of our perspective on an issue, coloring all the content we receive moving forward, even after we get more complete information. The most information that people will retain from such coverage consist of a vague impression of Trump as unjustly wiretapped by the bad and sick Obama, a conclusion also supported by research on the availability heuristic. This fallacious thinking pattern causes us to focus on information with emotional overtones, regardless of whether it is factual or relevant.
Likewise, shallow news skimmers may be influenced by the halo effect, a phenomenon of perception in which positive associations with one aspect of an individual cause us to perceive all aspects of that individual in a positive light. Most Americans have a default positive association with the office of the President; thus they tend to give its occupant the benefit of the doubt. To that end, statements by Trump appear more believable to the public simply because he occupies an office that typically signifies credibility, and also has access to secret information unavailable to most Americans. For the same reason, Trumps request to Congress to launch an investigation will appear credible, leading people to believe there is a good reason for such an inquiry, regardless of the evidence.
These thinking errors will cause the majority of Americans to develop a mistaken impression of Trumps wiretapping claims as legitimate, despite the lack of evidence, just as so many found the baseless birtherism accusations launched at Obama legitimate, or the idea that George Bush was behind 9/11. Consider Trumps evidence-free but often-repeated claim that millions of illegal ballots cast for Hillary Clinton cost him the popular vote, an allegation rated false by fact-checkers, and criticized by fellow Republicans such as Paul Ryan. Nonetheless, Trump launched an investigation in February 2017 of supposed voter fraud, just as he is now asking Congress to do in regard to the Obama administrations use of investigative powers.
The consequences of Trumps evidence-free claims are stunning in their impact. A Qualtrics poll in December 2016 showed that over half of all Republicans believe that Trump won the popular vote, as do 24 percent of independents and 7 percent of Democrats. This distribution shows the impact of confirmation bias, with Republicans much more likely to believe Trumps evidence-free claims. However, Trumps tactics and the nature of media coverage lead even some independents and Trumps political opponents to buy into Trumps claims. Incidentally, the poll suggests that more sophisticated political observers are less likely to believe Trump, with only 37 percent of Republicans who had a college degree accepting Trumps baseless allegations about millions of illegal votes.
Would you be surprised if Trumps current claims about wiretapping will be rated false by fact-checkers just as his voter fraud claims were? Would you be surprised if the investigation of wiretapping will find nothing, just as the investigation of voter fraud has not found anything? Yet Trump keeps making such claims with no evidence, and will keep doing so, because he gets exactly what he wants--millions of people believing his baseless allegations.
Reframing the media coverage of Trumps claims, using techniques informed by behavioral science, would disincentivize Trump from making such baseless statements, instead of rewarding him. Rather than focusing on relating the details of the specific claims made by Trump, news headlines and introductory paragraphs could foreground the pattern of our President systematically making accusations lacking evidence.
For instance, in the case of this specific news item, AP News could have run the headline Trump Delivers Another Accusation Without Evidence, This Time Against Obama. CNN could have introduced the story by focusing on Trumps pattern of making serial allegations of immoral and illegal actions by his political opponents without any evidence, focusing this time on his predecessor. Then, deeper in the
article where the shallow skimmers do not reach, the story could have detailed the allegations made by Trump. This style of media coverage would make Trump less inclined to make such claims, as he would not get the impact he wants.
You can make a difference when media venues publicize Trumps evidence-free accusations by writing letters to the editor encouraging them to reframe their reporting. By doing so, you will help create appropriate incentives for all politicians--not just Trump--to make such claims only when they are supported by evidence.
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How Behavioral Science Can Help Truth Triumph Over Baseless Accusations - Huffington Post
Gene technology raises ethical questions – Pacific Coast Business Times
By Frank Kalman
A relatively obscure talk about genes was given at UC Santa Barbara recently by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a researcher and clinical oncologist at Columbia University and author of a Pulitzer Prize winning book, the Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.
It was, however, on par in terms of gravity with talks many decades ago by the founders of the A-bomb, who espoused the benefits of radiation and harnessing the atom but also spoke of the dark side of splitting the atom.
Mukherjee spoke of engineering genes, of the huge life-saving potential but also of the dark side of gene manipulation.
He began by giving background on what a gene is: a unit of hereditary information that carries information to specify biological function. You might imagine genes as a set of master instructions carried between cells and between organisms that tell it how to build, maintain, repair and reproduce itself. It controls everything about us: the color of our eyes, our height and our intellect.
Mukherjee posed this question to the audience: If you knew your unborn child had an 80 percent chance of having autism, would you abort? Would you abort at 50 percent? At 25 percent?
Until recently, scientists were only able to determine if an embryo was predisposed to a serious disease. Now technologies are evolving, such as CRISPR, which allow scientists to edit malfunctioning genes causing these diseases.
Mukherjee discussed a recently released report from the National Academy of Sciences panel that proposes guidelines for gene editing. The report proposes that human embryo editing might be permissible if there are no other reasonable alternatives for treatment or prevention, the gene(s) being altered result in a serious disease or condition, or the genes cause or strongly predispose a person to that disease or condition.
Picture a woman told that she carries a mutation in her BRCA-1 gene, so she has a 60 to 70 percent chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer during her lifetime.
Concerned that this not be a burden for her unborn children and descendants, she seeks to have the mutated gene removed.
According to the NAS panel, she doesnt automatically qualify for genetic engineering. The conditions in the report are not absolutely clear and are subject to interpretation.
Then there is the issue of genetic engineering for the purpose of enhancement. This was the scariest part of Mukherjees entire presentation human enhancement to increase a childs muscle mass and athletic ability or to boost intelligence.
The NAS panels report is firmly against the use of gene editing for human enhancements but this is where Mukherjee raises red flags. He said the rich will have the ability to conduct the testing and pay for the genetic engineering not only to avoid disease but also for enhancements.
After 50 or 500 years of this, two groups of human beings will exist the enhanced and the unenhanced.
The NAS report encourages government bodies to conduct public discussion and policy debate. Gene editing truly requires smart and strong federal regulation. We are at a very critical juncture in the history of humanity, just like we were in the 1940s with the atom.
This new gene technology could not have presented itself at a worse time. The Trump administrations chief adviser, Stephen Bannon, recently told the Conservative Political Action Conference, If you look at these cabinet nominees, they were selected for a reason, and that is destruction, destruction of the administrative state. In other words, they were selected to destroy their respective regulatory agencies.
We must be extremely grateful for Mukherjees effort to ring the alarm bell in an effort to make us aware of this critical juncture in our history. There are extremely complicated ethical questions that require extremely thoughtful solutions. They will also require strongly enforced federal regulation.
Frank Kalman is the executive director of the Kids Cancer Research Foundation in San Luis Obispo. You can contact him at [emailprotected]
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Gene technology raises ethical questions - Pacific Coast Business Times
North Korea’s ‘Chemistry’ With WMDs Analysis – Eurasia Review
Post the 2003 Iraq war, the debate regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was confined mostly to the realm of nuclear weapons for more than a decade. The perception that WMDs are not for actual use but for deterrence broadly continues to hold in the post Cold War period too. However, it is also a fact that certain categories of WMD like chemical weapons (CW) have been used during the Cold War. In the post Cold War era too, the Syrian conflict and the alleged use of CW to kill the half-brother of North Koreas leader Kim Jong-un in Malaysia continues to shine a spotlight on the dangers of the use of such weapons.
In the post 9/11 period, it was professed that the major threat in the realm of WMDs could emerge mainly from the international terror groups. The use of CW in Syria in August 2013 however dealt a blow to this thinking. It was confirmed by the United Nations that the CW were used at a location called Ghouta (suburb in Damascus), killing nearly 1,500 civilians. These weapons were found used at few other locations in Syria during earlier occasions too. President Barack Obama had asserted in 2012 that any possible usage of chemical weapons would amount to crossing a red line, which would invite a US military response. The military intervention by the US forces in Syria did happen few months after the use of CW by the Syrian forces (or by rebel forces as claimed by the Assad regime).1 CW were also used as the bargaining tools in the West Asian geo-political theatre. One of the reasons for Libya to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) by declaring its weapons stockpile during 2004 was Gaddafis desperation to normalise relations with the Western world.
North Korea has blatantly breached the CW red line in a very peculiar manner in the latest incident. Kim Jong-nam was killed on February 13 at Kuala Lumpur airport while he was waiting to catch a flight. Two women wiped a substance on his face leading to his death within 20 minutes. It has been found that the substance used for this killing was a nerve agent called VX. This agent is considered as one of the most potent chemicals which affects the nervous system and disturbs the functioning of human muscles eventually leading to death. This substance is derived from organophosphate pesticides and its lethal dose ranges from about 10 milligrams via skin contact to 25-30 milligrams, if inhaled.2 This substance has been classified by the United Nations as a WMD.
The attack was a bit of a surprise as Pyongyang had not given any indications regarding a renewed interest in CW. For more than a decade now, North Korea has been attracting global attention by undertaking nuclear tests and launching missiles. They have also undertaken few satellite launches by using their own rockets. By successfully orchestrating an assassination by using CW, North Korea has succeeded in sending a message that they are not averse to using the WMD in their possession. Kim Jong-un is keen to ensure that no challenge emerges to his position from his extended family. From the North Korean point of view, the use of VX agent was a perfect choice, because this agent is known to cause instant death.
The most appalling aspect of the killing was that though the victim died within about 20 minutes, nothing is known to have happened to the women who were seen to have used their hands to apply the VX agent on the face of the victim. This clearly indicates that some successful method has been devised to protect the women from the dangerous affects of the nerve agent. Also, the production of VX is not a simple task and requires a lot of technological sophistication. The major question which remains unanswered though is the manner in which the deadly CW reached Malaysia.
North Korea is alleged to have the worlds third-largest stockpile of CW. They are known to have produced agents like Sarin, VX, Mustard, Tabun and Hydrogen Cyanide. North Korea is one of the three states (apart from Egypt and Sudan) that has not signed or acceded to the CWC. It is believed to be producing CW since the 1980s and is now estimated to have stockpiles of around 25 chemical agents amounting to approximately 5,000 tons. North Korea is also known to have made investments in biological weapons, and believed to be having 12-13 types of biological weapons, including anthrax, plague, among others.3
North Korea has taken the biggest of political risks by using CW at this point in time and that too in a friendly foreign state. North Korea and Malaysia established bilateral relationship more than 45 years ago. Both the states opened embassies at Kuala Lumpur and Pyongyang in 2003. Since 2009, Malaysians did not require a visa to travel to North Korea (and vice versa). After the airport incident, North Koreans are now required to obtain a visa to visit Malaysia.
The incident is also spoiling the important relationship that Pyongyang shares with its all-weather friend, China. Beijing has been extremely upset with the brazen missile testing undertaken by North Korea in recent times. China, which was importing coal from North Korea in spite of the UN sanctions, decided to suspend all imports on February 19. For the Trump administration, dealing with North Korea will continue to be a major challenge. The CWC, considered one of the most successful arms control treaty mechanisms in the world and which would be celebrating its twenty years of existence in April 2017, continues to face serious challenges even today.
Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/north-korea-chemistry-with-wmds_avlele_060317
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North Korea's 'Chemistry' With WMDs Analysis - Eurasia Review
Celebrate National Nutrition Month by eating right – LA Daily News
March is National Nutrition Month, and this years theme is Put Your Best Fork Forward. Each day provides a fresh opportunity to make smart food choices for better health and every small step or forkful made toward eating well counts.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics first celebrated National Nutrition Month (NNM) in 1980 to encourage healthier eating practices. Today, the public is more knowledgeable about food and nutrition than ever before. In fact, we are often inundated with an overwhelming amount of information and resources about what to eat. We can embrace the theme of NNM this year by getting back to basics and make simple steps to eat better that are proven by science.
Here are some evidence-based healthy eating practices you can implement now to help you Put Your Best Fork Forward.
If you want to make changes to your eating habits and, just as importantly, get results, tracking your food intake is critical. Studies demonstrate that those who track their food are more successful with weight loss and sustaining a long-term plan. While web-based applications like MyFitnessPal and Lose It! provide extensive food databases that include the nutrition facts, a simple paper journal and pen will suffice.
The evidence is clear that eating seafood, especially fatty fish like tuna and salmon, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, helps reduce the risk of illnesses like heart disease, depression and Alzheimers disease. Many people dont get the recommended two to three servings of fish per week and with the brain and eye development benefits this is particularly important for pregnant and nursing mothers, as well as children. Whats more, a study in the Nutrition Journal reported that canned or pouched tuna is a cost-effective protein and a way for all of us to enjoy the health benefits of fish.
People who eat more fruits and vegetables tend to be healthier and live longer than those with intake that falls short. Eating more fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of chronic illnesses including heart disease and cancer. One large-scale study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health found that eating at least seven servings of fruits and vegetables daily compared to eating less than one serving daily reduces the risk of death by 42 percent.
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We have all heard repeatedly that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but choosing a breakfast that is high in protein can help keep weight off by reducing hunger and daily food intake while stabilizing blood sugar levels. To boost your morning protein consumption, reach for foods like eggs, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, lox, Canadian bacon and protein smoothies. Adding protein-containing ingredients like nuts, nut butter, seeds and cheese to common breakfast items like oatmeal or toast can help increase breakfast protein.
Mindful eating strategies that help slow down the pace of eating controlled portions and remove distractions during mealtime can have an overall positive impact on the dining experience, while reducing the likelihood of the common problem of overeating. Simple habits like avoiding the use of electronics while eating, using smaller plates and making healthy foods accessible can make a big difference.
LeeAnn Weintraub, a registered dietitian, provides nutrition counseling and consulting to individuals, families and businesses. She can be reached at RD@halfacup.com.
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Celebrate National Nutrition Month by eating right - LA Daily News
Industrial Microbiology Market to Show Impressive Growth Rate Between 2016-2024 – Digital Journal
Impact analysis of key growth drivers and restraints are included in this report to better equip clients with crystal clear decision-making insights.
This press release was orginally distributed by SBWire
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/09/2017 -- Industrial microbiology is the application of microbiology techniques for management and exploitation of microorganisms for production and processing of useful products on a commercial scale. Industrial microbiology has wide applications in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, agriculture products, industrial chemicals, environment and others. The growing research in these field for obtaining high quality products is expected to fuel growth of the global industrial microbiology market. Moreover, factors such as increasing awareness among researchers related to new strains of microorganisms capable of producing enhanced quality products which have applications in drug development, food processing and other industries is expected to fuel growth of the global industrial microbiology market.
Request Sample Copy of the Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/sample/2085
Future Market Insights offers forecast of the global industrial microbiology market between 2016 and 2026. In terms of value, the market is expected to register a CAGR of 7.1% during the forecast period. The study demonstrates market dynamics that are expected to influence the current environment and future status of the global industrial microbiology market over the forecast period. It includes key trends, drivers, restraints, and opportunities influencing growth of the global industrial microbiology market over forecast period 20162026. Impact analysis of key growth drivers and restraints are included in this report to better equip clients with crystal clear decision-making insights.
Make an Enquiry @ http://www.mrrse.com/enquiry/2085
North America industrial microbiology market is estimated to account for 27.3% revenue share in 2016, and is expected to dominate the global industrial microbiology market over the forecast period. Europe industrial microbiology market is expected to register a significant CAGR over the forecast period.
Read Complete Report @ http://www.mrrse.com/industrial-microbiology-market
Some key market participants included in FMI's global industrial microbiology market include Merck KGaA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Becton, Dickinson and Company, Asiagel Corporation, Eppendorf AG, bioMerieux SA, Novamed., QIAGEN, Sartorius AG, 3M and Danaher Corporation
About MRRSE MRRSE stands for Market Research Reports Search Engine, the largest online catalog of latest market research reports based on industries, companies, and countries. MRRSE sources thousands of industry reports, market statistics, and company profiles from trusted entities and makes them available at a click. Besides well-known private publishers, the reports featured on MRRSE typically come from national statistics agencies, investment agencies, leading media houses, trade unions, governments, and embassies.
For more information on this press release visit: http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/industrial-microbiology-market/release-779783.htm
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Industrial Microbiology Market to Show Impressive Growth Rate Between 2016-2024 - Digital Journal
Venter discusses genetic engineering, human longevity – The Daily Princetonian
In a quote written on a chalkboard in the Caltech archives, Richard Feynman said, What I cannot create, I do not understand.
This quote is the root of inspiration for geneticist J. Craig Venters research and scientific mission. Genomics is at an exciting stage today where what we understand about the genome can be applied directly to human health, Venter said in a lecture titled From Synthetic Life to Human Longevity on Wednesday.
Venter explained that there was no point in increasing lifespan alone, but the challenge was to increase an individuals healthspan. He stated that 40 percent of men and 24 percent of women between the ages of 50-74 in the United States do not reach the age of 74. A third of this population dies of cardiovascular disease and another third of cancer, leaving all other causes of death to just a third of the overall percentage, he said.
Venter, co-founder of Human Longevity, Inc., said that his goal was to change medicines approach to being proactive, predictive, personalized, and preventative by using whole genome sequencing and cutting-edge imaging and measurement technology. Early detection is literally lifesaving, he said, explaining that over 40 percent of people who entered his lab thinking they were healthy turned out not to be.
He said that his own genome showed an increased risk for prostate cancer, which he corroborated with a measure of his testosterone levels. While men with over 22 triplet repeats of a certain sequence on their X chromosome have very low incidences of prostate cancer, Venter said he only had six, which placed him on the extremely low end of the spectrum. He said that based on his genome sequence and testosterone readings, he underwent a prostatectomy a few months ago.
Early prediction of diseases like Alzheimers, which can be predicted 20 years in advance of the first symptoms by using whole-genome sequencing and neuro-quant data, can be prevented with the right drugs, Venter noted. He added that the same could be done with cancer tumors, and there was the potential to move to entirely preventative cancer vaccines, something that already exists for some forms of the disease.
Venter said that genotype could predict not only disease but also other phenotypes. His Face Project uses machine learning to reconstruct a three-dimensional human face from the genome alone, he noted. Venter also said that recordings of a voice could be used to predict the speakers age, sex, and height.
All of this information comes from about 40,000 genome sequences that has produced over 20 petabytes of data, Venter explained. He added that the sequencing of one million human genomes could produce one quintillion bytes of data, an amount that nobody in the world knows how to handle, yet the government could not be convinced that genomics was a big data problem. Sequencing the first human genome, a project whose private arm was spearheaded by Venter, took over nine years, cost more than a billion dollars, and, in 1999, had the third largest computer in the world built solely for that purpose, he explained.
Venters other major project was the synthesis of a living organism from scratch, which he and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute accomplished in 2008 by converting digital binary bits into an organism that could live on its own.
The day we announced this, both the President and the Pope released statements, with the President calling for this to be the number one priority of the bioethics committee, and the Pope reassuring people that we had not actually created life, but just changed one of lifes motors, he said.
Venters team also discovered that the genome could be modularized so that entire sets of genes could be classified as metabolism, for example, and inserted into the genome. He said that to distinguish this synthetic life from existing organisms, into the genome of the organism was coded the names of the forty scientists that worked on the project, and quotations from James Joyce, Robert Oppenheimer, and Feynman.
Venter explained that despite having created an entirely new organism, scientists still do not understand the functions of a third of the genes, only that they appear throughout the biological tree and are necessary for the organisms survival.
Like any good science, we found out how little we know rather than how much we know, Venter said.
The event, part of the Princeton Public Lectures Vanuxem Lecture Series, was attended by members of the community in addition to Princeton students and faculty. The lecture took place in McCosh 50 at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
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Venter discusses genetic engineering, human longevity - The Daily Princetonian
A new tool for genetically engineering the oldest branch of life – Phys.Org
March 8, 2017 G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology and theme leader of the IGB's Mining Microbial Genomes theme Bill Metcalf, left, with IGB Fellow Dipti Nayak. Credit: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A new study by G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois Bill Metcalf with postdoctoral Fellow Dipti Nayak has documented the use of CRISPR-Cas9 mediated genome editing in the third domain of life, Archaea, for the first time. Their groundbreaking work, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has the potential to vastly accelerate future studies of these organisms, with implications for research including global climate change. Metcalf and Nayak are members of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.
"Under most circumstances our model archaeon, Methanosarcina acetivorans, has a doubling time of eight to ten hours, as compared to E. coli, which can double in about 30 minutes. What that means is that doing genetics, getting a mutant, can take monthsthe same thing would take three days in E. coli," explains Nayak. "What CRISPR-Cas9 enables us to do, at a very basic level, is speed up the whole process. It removes a major bottleneck... in doing genetics research with this archaeon.
"Even more," continues Nayak, "with our previous techniques, mutations had to be introduced one step at a time. Using this new technology, we can introduce multiple mutations at the same time. We can scale up the process of mutant generation exponentially with CRISPR."
CRISPR, short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, began as an immune defense system in archaea and bacteria. By identifying and storing short fragments of foreign DNA, Cas (CRISPR-associated system) proteins are able to quickly identify that DNA in the future, so that it can then quickly be destroyed, protecting the organism from viral invasion.
Since its discovery, a version of this immune systemCRISPR-Cas9has been modified to edit genomes in the lab. By pairing Cas9 with a specifically engineered RNA guide rather than a fragment of invasive DNA, the CRISPR system can be directed to cut a cell's genome in an arbitrary location such that existing genes can be removed or new ones added. This system has been prolifically useful in editing eukaryotic systems from yeast, to plant, to fish and even human cells, earning it the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2015 Breakthrough of the Year award. However, its implementation in prokaryotic species has been met with hurdles, due in part to their different cellular processes.
To use CRISPR in a cellular system, researchers have to develop a protocol that takes into account a cell's preferred mechanism of DNA repair: after CRISPR's "molecular scissors" cut the chromosome, the cell's repair system steps in to mend the damage through a mechanism that can be harnessed to remove or add additional genetic material. In eukaryotic cells, this takes the form of Non-Homologous End Joining (NHEJ). Though this pathway has been used for CRISPR-mediated editing, it has the tendency to introduce genetic errors during its repair process: nucleotides, the rungs of the DNA ladder, are often added or deleted at the cut site.
NHEJ is very uncommon in prokaryotes, including Archaea; instead, their DNA is more often repaired through a process known as homology-directed repair. By comparing the damage to a DNA template, homology-directed repair creates what Nayak calls a "deterministic template"the end result can be predicted in advance and tailored to the exact needs of the researcher.
In many ways, homology-directed repair is actually preferable for genome editing: "As much as we want CRISPR-Cas9 to make directed edits in eukaryotic systems, we often end up with things that we don't want, because of NHEJ," explains Nayak. "In this regard, it was a good thing that most archaeal strains don't have a non-homologous end joining repair system, so the only way DNA can be repaired is through this deterministic homologous repair route."
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, one of Nayak and Metcalf's first uses of CRISPR-Cas9 was to introduce an NHEJ mechanism in Methanosarcina acetivorans. Though generally not preferable for genome editing, says Nayak, NHEJ has one use for which it's superior to homologous repair: "If you just want to delete a gene, if you don't care how ... non-homologous end joining is actually more efficient."
By using the introduced NHEJ repair system to perform what are known as "knock-out" studies, wherein a single gene is removed or silenced to see what changes are produced and what processes that gene might affect, Nayak says that future research will be able to assemble a genetic atlas of M. acetivorans and other archaeal species. Such an atlas would be incredibly useful for a variety of fields of research involving Archaea, including an area of particular interest to the Metcalf lab, climate change.
"Methanosarcina acetivorans is the one of the most genetically tractable archaeal strains," says Nayak. "[Methanogens are] a class of archaea that produce gigatons of this potent greenhouse gas every year, play a keystone role in the global carbon cycle, and therefore contribute significantly to global climate change." By studying the genetics of this and similar organisms, Nayak and Metcalf hope to gain not only a deeper understanding of archaeal genetics, but of their role in broader environmental processes.
In all, this research represents an exciting new direction in studying and manipulating archaea. "We began this research to determine if the use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in archaea was even possible," concludes Nayak. "What we've discovered is that it's not only possible, but it works remarkably well, even as compared to eukaryotic systems."
Explore further: Modifying fat content in soybean oil with the molecular scissors Cpf1
More information: Dipti D. Nayak et al, Cas9-mediated genome editing in the methanogenic archaeon, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618596114
A team from the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Research (IBS), succeeded in editing two genes that contribute to the fat contents of soybean oil using the new CRISPR-Cpf1 technology: an alternative ...
Although the genome editing system known as CRISPR/Cas has revolutionized genetic research in cell lines, its overall efficiency has been relatively poor when used to generate genetically altered animals for disease modeling. ...
Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have harnessed the power of CRISPR/Cas9 to create more-potent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that enhance tumor rejection in mice. The unexpected findings, ...
Rest easy, folks. Armies of genetically modified super-species are unlikely to conquer Earth anytime soon.
A unique gene-editing method that efficiently inserts DNA into genes located in dividing and non-dividing cells of living rats has been developed by a team of international researchers, including scientists from KAUST.
CRISPR-Cas9 is a powerful new tool for editing the genome. For researchers around the world, the CRISPR-Cas9 technique is an exciting innovation because it is faster and cheaper than previous methods. Now, using a molecular ...
A team of researchers with members from several institutions in India has found evidence of ostrich relatives living in India as far back as 25,000 years ago. In their paper uploaded to the open access site PLOS ONE, the ...
A new mathematical model could help clarify what drove the evolution of large brains in humans and other animals, according to a study published in PLOS Computational Biology.
A global research team has built five new synthetic yeast chromosomes, meaning that 30 percent of a key organism's genetic material has now been swapped out for engineered replacements. This is one of several findings of ...
Led by Tianjin University Professor Ying-Jin Yuan, TJU's synthetic biology team has completed the synthesis of redesigned yeast chromosomes synV and synX with the two studies published in Science on March 10, 2017.
A small fly the size of a grain of rice could be the Top Gun of the fly world, with a remarkable ability to detect and intercept its prey mid-air, changing direction mid-flight if necessary before sweeping round for the kill.
A specific protein inside cells senses threatening changes in its environment, such as heat or starvation, and triggers an adaptive response to help the cell continue to function and grow under stressful conditions, according ...
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A new tool for genetically engineering the oldest branch of life - Phys.Org
Study identifies best exercise to reverse signs of aging – Fox News
You already know working out regularly can help keep you slim, boost your mood, aid your sleep, and even stave off disease. But a new study has identified a potential mode of exercise that may help optimize the reversal of any unwanted signs of aging high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
The idea is that instead of long, steady movement (think: running several miles on a treadmill at the same speed and incline), alternating between quick spurts of intense, all-out exercise and lower-intensity exercise during HIIT can help raise your heart rate and enable you to shed more fat, faster.
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In the new study, published Tuesday in Cell Metabolism, researchers found HIIT in aerobic exercises like biking and walking revved cells ability to generate more proteins within mitochondria and their protein-building ribosomes essentially stunting aging at a cellular level.
"Based on everything we know, there's no substitute for these exercise programs when it comes to delaying the aging process," senior study author Sreekumaran Nair, a medical doctor and diabetes researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in a news release. "These things we are seeing cannot be done by any medicine."
Researchers enrolled 36 men and 36 women from a younger group (ages 18 to 30) and an older group (ages 65 to 80). Each group received a different exercise assignment: either high-intensity interval biking, strength training with weights, or a regimen that combined strength training and HIIT.
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Next, they biopsied participants thigh muscles and compared their molecular makeup against those of sedentary volunteers. They also analyzed the participants lean muscle mass and insulin sensitivity, which is a marker for type 2 diabetes.
They found strength training aided muscle building, but the younger group that did HIIT saw a 49 percent increase in mitochondrial capacity and the older group saw a 69 percent increase. HIIT also helped reduce insulin sensitivity.
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The one thing HIIT wasnt good for? Building muscle. Thats why a mix of HIIT and strength training may offer the most benefits, as muscle mass tends to decline with aging, Nair noted.
"If people have to pick one exercise, I would recommend high-intensity interval training, Nair said in the release, but I think it would be more beneficial if they could do 3-4 days of interval training and then a couple days of strength training.
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Study identifies best exercise to reverse signs of aging - Fox News
George A. Olah, who won Nobel Prize in chemistry, dies at 89 – ABC … – ABC News
George A. Olah, whose work won a Nobel Prize in chemistry and paved the way for more effective oil refining and ways of producing less polluting forms of gasoline, has died at age 89.
Olah died Wednesday at his Beverly Hills home, according to the University of Southern California's Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, of which he was founding director. No cause of death was provided.
Olah's research brought him the 1994 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his groundbreaking study of the unstable carbon molecules known as carbocations.
"Distinguished professor George Olah was a true legend in the field of chemistry," USC President C. L. Max Nikias said in a statement Thursday. "His pioneering research fundamentally redefined the field's landscape and will influence its scholarly work for generations to come."
The Hungarian government offered its condolences for Olah, who fled Hungary during a 1950s Soviet crackdown on dissent.
"The country has lost a great patriot and one of the most outstanding figures of Hungarian scientific life," said Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Olah received the Nobel Prize for his work on superacids, research that led his observation of carbocations an unstable, fleeting chemical species that he discovered how to stabilize long enough to study its properties.
He said there was no "eureka moment" and credited the find to long hours spent in his chemistry lab, usually starting before dawn and continuing late into the night.
He also singled out for praise his longtime USC collaborator Surya Prakash, who began working with Olah in the 1970s as a 20-year-old grad student and now leads the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute.
Born in Budapest on May 22, 1927, Olah said he had little interest in chemistry as a youngster.
"My main interest was in the humanities, particularly history, literature, etc.," he said in a statement published on the Nobel website. "I was (and still am) (an) avid reader and believe that getting attached too early to a specific field frequently shortchanges a balanced broad education."
Instead he studied Latin for eight years as well as German, French and other languages. The son of a lawyer said he was fortunate to attend a school he called one of the best in Budapest.
It was at the Technical University of Budapest where his interest in science was finally piqued.
After earning a doctorate in organic chemistry, he went to work for the Central Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science.
He was leading a research team there in 1956 when the Soviet Union cracked down on the country following the Hungarian Uprising of that year. He, his wife, their young son and most of his research team fled the country.
Eventually moving to Michigan, he began research on carbocations while employed by Dow Chemical Co. Later he taught at Cleveland's Western Reserve University before moving to USC in the late 1970s.
Honored by numerous scientific societies as well as his native country, Olah authored or co-authored nearly two dozen books and published nearly 1,500 papers. He held 160 patents from seven countries, according to USC.
He is survived by his wife, Judith Olah, sons George and Ronald, and several grandchildren.
The university plans a campus celebration of his life at a later date.
AP writer Pablo Gorondi in Budapest contributed to this story.
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George A. Olah, who won Nobel Prize in chemistry, dies at 89 - ABC ... - ABC News
Confusion, Discord Follow APSP Residential Chemistry Standard Language – Pool & Spa News
Recently, word circulated that the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals was creating a new residential water quality standard, alarming many industry professionals. The organization says concern is premature and that much of the language already exists in standard or even law.
Last year, APSPs Recreational Water Quality Committee (RWQC) began to explore the possibility of creating APSP-10 Residential Water Quality Standard. The group spent about 1 years seeking data to determine whether the needs of residential water quality were discernibly different that those of commercial, said RWQC Chairman Joseph Laurino, Ph.D.
Residential water quality is as important as public water quality, said Laurino, also president/CEO of Periodic Products in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The reason why the organization wants to address it is because it deals with the safety of the bather ...
While neither the association nor the RWQC made this public, word got out. Many saw the potential for regulation on the residential level and took issue.
Service professionals, in particular, worried that such a standard could expose them to liability if a problem should arise. Some worried that, if the standard required certain parameters to be maintained constantly, it would require more than the normal once-per-week service and scare some homeowners away from service completely.
They wondered who would enforce the standard in areas that adopt it, since home pools and spas generally are not policed.
Even some industry associations, including the California Pool & Spa Association, have already stated opposition to such a standard.
Laurino believes the alarm resulted from a misunderstanding. Certain segments ... took that to mean that a standard was ready to launch, he said. [But] it never came out of committee its still in the committee.
The CPSA Board of Directors, in a letter to APSP, recognized that no standard language had been released yet, so there are no specifics to which to respond. We are speaking right now against the need for such a standard, the letter read. Should this committee proceed to draft a document, CPSA will surely oppose [it].
The group said the industry has built consensus on the key parameters, and promotes them through manufacturers and organizations such as the Independent Pool & Spa Service Association, and even APSP itself. The availability of these parameters is well-known and documented, CPSA said. Is there some public health crisis that is driving this effort?
The group also said it sees no benefit to the consumer. Why would we want to create a standard that does not benefit the consumer and yet creates problems for our own industry? the CPSA Board said. We think we have plenty of that with governmental regulation.
As head of a service firm, CPSA President Jerry Wallace wondered what would happen to those who employ anything besides the Langelier Index. ... The Hamilton index has been around a long time, and it advocates for a higher pH than whats been advocated said the president of Swim Chem in Sacramento, Calif.
Laurino said the concerns are premature and largely based on misunderstandings. It did consider a separate standard but, for the time being, has chosen against it. Instead, APSP will update existing language about residential chemistry in its APSP-5 Standard for Residential Inground Swimming Pools. As with all APSP standards, the language will be released for public comment when it is ready.
There are other reasons APSP finds itself puzzled by the reaction. Residential-chemistry parameters have been included in APSP-5 for a few years now, Laurino said. Additionally, he said, only sanitizer and pH parameters are being addressed, as they impact swimmer health and safety. These parameters already are mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency in its Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, he added.
The RWQC is meeting this week at the Western Pool and Spa Show, with non-members in attendance to gain further information and provide comments. Check poolspanews.com and later issues for updated information.
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Confusion, Discord Follow APSP Residential Chemistry Standard Language - Pool & Spa News
LANL’s Jaqueline L. Kiplinger Receives IUPAC 2017 Distinguished Women In Chemistry Award – Los Alamos Daily Post
Jaqueline Kiplinger was recognized this week with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry 2017 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering award. Courtesy/LANL
LANL News:
Los Alamos chemist is only US scientist thus honored
Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow Jaqueline Kiplinger was recognized this week with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) 2017 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering award. Kiplinger was one of 12 women recognized this year internationally and the only recipient of this honor from the United States.
The IUPAC Award recognizes Kiplingers outstanding scientific achievements. Sheis a pioneer in uranium and thorium chemistry, and her research has significantly expanded thebroad understanding of actinide and lanthanide chemical bonding and reactivity, said Alan Bishop, Principal Associate Director for Science, Technology and Engineering at Los Alamos. Her workprovides scientific underpinning that supports the Laboratorys national security mission as well as advancing the fundamental understanding of actinide chemistry.
The IUPAC awards program, initiated as part of the 2011 International Year of Chemistry celebrations, was created to acknowledge and promote the work of women chemists/chemical engineers worldwide. These 12 awardees have been selected based on excellence in basic or applied research, distinguished accomplishments in teaching or education, or demonstrated leadership or managerial excellence in the chemical sciences. The focus is particularly on nominees with a history of leadership and/or community service during their careers.
Kiplinger was recognized by IUPAC for her extensive contributions in three areas of inorganic chemistry. Her work has focused on the organometallic chemistry of pentavalent uranium, the realization of a terminal nitride complex of uranium, and non-aqueous uranium and thorium precursors for use in subsequent inorganic and organometallic synthetic efforts.
To be nominated and selected for the IUPAC Distinguished Woman in Chemistry Award by my colleagues is such an extraordinary honor, Kiplinger said. I have found much joy in actinide chemistry research, both in advancing fundamental knowledge for the nation, and in training many next generation of scientists. Collaborations have been critical to my success, and I have been privileged to work with many talented and motivated staff, postdocs and students who have helped me advance this experimentally challenging area of chemistry. None of these discoveries would have been made without them, she said.
Kiplinger acknowledged her work with the DOE Basic Energy Sciences, Heavy Element Program, the Los Alamos G.T. Seaborg Institute for Transactinium Science, and Los Alamos Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program that provided the continuity, exposure, and interactions with first-class researchers, which she said made possible her contributions to the field of actinide chemistry.
In addition to her research contributions, Kiplinger has for years dedicated time to the American Chemical Society (ACS), serving on journal editorial boards and holding different positions in the ACSs division of Inorganic Chemistry.
Dr. Kiplinger has inarguably made a huge impact on the inorganic chemistry community beginning with her graduate work under Tom Richmond at Utah for which they received the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award, and continuing unabated as she moved into the challenging area of early actinide organometallic chemistry at Los Alamos, said coworker and former Los Alamos Chemistry Division Leader David Morris. She has made transformative research contributions that have already influenced synthetic actinide chemistry on an international scale.
Kiplinger is an internationally recognized leader in f-element chemistry. Kiplinger came to Los Alamos as the first Frederick Reines Postdoctoral Fellow in 1999 and became a Technical Staff Member within Chemistry Division in July 2002. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Institute of Chemists.
The breadth and depth of her accomplishments are reflected by her peer-reviewed publications, granted patents, invitations to contribute to prestigious monographs and review articles, and plenary lectures delivered at international conferences in the field. Her scientific achievements have been recognized by a Los Alamos Fellowship, a Fellows Prize for Research, two R&D 100 Awards, three mentoring awards and several Los Alamos/NNSA Best-in-Class Pollution Prevention Awards. In 2015 Kiplinger was selected as the first woman to receive the F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society.She is also the first scientist at Los Alamos to have been honored with two national-level ACS awards, the first being the 1998 Nobel Laureate Signature Award in Chemistry.
About Los Alamos National Laboratory (www.lanl.gov)
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, BWX Technologies, Inc. and URS Corporation for the Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and global security concerns.
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LANL's Jaqueline L. Kiplinger Receives IUPAC 2017 Distinguished Women In Chemistry Award - Los Alamos Daily Post
Grey’s Anatomy Recap: Mommy Issues – Vulture
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Jjgq^mE='di?Q?~e6CjEJKAC^=.@jg_am@1y^L)&+BI3yBwU } 19dL+Bx~X?m_vGOHBiz='AJ/4"@p}Nsmf);Bn0e|_}5!S (Osj5.T V*3O^kO~=[{
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Grey's Anatomy Recap: Mommy Issues - Vulture
Intellia R&D head says new gene-editing data shows path to human trials – Boston Business Journal
Boston Business Journal | Intellia R&D head says new gene-editing data shows path to human trials Boston Business Journal Cambridge-based Intellia Therapeutics had the biggest IPO of any local biotech in 2016, but shares of the company have lagged in recent months, and it has often been overshadowed by its gene-editing rival in Kendall Square, Editas Medicine. |
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Intellia R&D head says new gene-editing data shows path to human trials - Boston Business Journal
Precision Medicine Project Mulls How to Return Genetic Test Results to 1 Million Participants – GenomeWeb
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) Before the National Institutes of Health can begin to genetically test participants within its precision medicine initiative, it will have to figure out what results to return, how to minimize reporting false positives, and how to provide counseling to help them navigate the often uncertain and evolving evidence on genetic information.
And the project will have to figure out how to do all this on an unprecedented scale, for a million participants that the All of Us Research Program hopes to enroll over the next four years.
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Precision Medicine Project Mulls How to Return Genetic Test Results to 1 Million Participants - GenomeWeb
Good chemistry leading to hot bats for Texas Tech – LubbockOnline.com
After Cameron Warren flied out to right field in his first at-bat, Texas Tech center fielder and last years leading hitter Tanner Gardner gave him a bit of advice.
Cam struggled a little bit to begin the year and after (his first at-bat) I told him to just hit a ball up the middle and he came through, Gardner said.
Warren was 1 of 17 to start the season, but he along with the rest of the Red Raiders broke out in a big way Tuesday against No.4 Arizona, racking up 14 hits in a 13-1 win. Warren was 2 for 4 with three RBIs as the bottom of the Tech lineup drove in seven runs.
He has swing the bat (well) his whole life. He swung in the fall and we led him off opening day because we thought he could be in there everyday, Texas Tech coach Tim Tadlock said. It is good to see him get going and it will be better if we do get him going (long-term).
Warrens success was one of many Tuesday as four players had multi-hit games, including Hunter Hargrove, Michael Berglund, Warren and Gardner. Gardner, who went into last weekend hitting around .150, jump started the Tech offense. He was 2 for 3 with three runs, raising his batting average to .232 in the process.
We felt like he has been coming the last 10 days, Tadlock said He swung the bat well against Cal and then against New Mexico, too. Anytime someone is in the middle of your lineup it is good to get him going, but it wont always reflect it in the box score. His presence to separate balls and strikes is good and they have to play the corners in because he can push and drag (a bunt), which is awesome for a guy hitting in the middle of the order even if you dont ask them to do it a lot.
Berglund was 3 for 4 with two runs and two RBIs as the freshman catcher looked like he was beginning to figure things out at the plate and behind it.
I think I was relaxed and separated balls and strikes tonight and that is what our coaches preach, Berglund said. I think we all did that today. It took a little while in the fall to get to know people and now that the season is rolling we are creating a lot of chemistry. The older guys put a lot of confidence in us newer guys and that helps a lot.
That chemistry has led to three straight wins over top-10 teams for the Red Raiders (12-2), making it the first time since 2014 to accomplish the feat. Last weekend at the 2017 Shriners Hospitals for Children College Classic, Tech took down No. 8 Ole Miss on Saturday, 5-1, and No. 2 LSU on Sunday, 5-2.
There is a lot clicking right now and the guys in the locker room can feel it, Gardner said.
The No. 6 Red Raiders (12-2) open up a three-game weekend series against UTSA (7-5) on Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Dan Law Field at Rip Griffin Park. Saturdays tilt is set for 2 p.m., while Sundays finale is slated for 1 p.m.
I think we are going to continue to grow. Each day is an opportunity to learn something and get better, Tadlock said. I think we are just getting started.
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Good chemistry leading to hot bats for Texas Tech - LubbockOnline.com
ISU MBB: Poor defense, chemistry lead to historically bad season for ISU – Idaho State Journal
RENO, Nev. This season was supposed to be the top of the mountain.
Or, at least, a building block toward a program turnaround.
Instead, it was neither. Not even close.
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Idaho States season ended Tuesday with a 91-76 loss to Sacramento State in the first round of the Big Sky Conference tournament in Reno, Nevada, giving the Bengals a 5-26 overall record and a seasons worth of sour taste.
Around the same time a year earlier, ISU was preparing to play in its first conference tournament in four years. The Bengals climbed from the conference cellar to fourth place thanks to a revamped offense and an East Coast basketball prodigy. ISU earned a first-round tournament bye, Coney Islands Ethan Telfair was a first-team all-conference selection and veteran head coach Bill Evans was tabbed Big Sky Coach of the Year for leading his team to its first winning season since 2002-03.
Present day, the Bengals are moving on from their two-year superstar and one-year upswing and picking up the pieces from a historically bad season nobody saw coming.
This team was a more talented team than last year, Evans said Tuesday after the loss to Sac State. Theres a lot of things that can get in the way of talent. Potential doesnt win games. Productivity wins games. We werent productive enough.
Idaho States 26 losses are the most in a season in program history. The Bengals 5-26 record gives them the second-worst winning percentage ever at .161. Only 1941-42s 3-20 mark is worse.
In five seasons under Evans, who is known for his problematic matchup zone defense, ISUs defense was never worse than this one. Bengals opponents averaged 80.2 points, shot 48.1 percent overall and 39.6 percent from 3-point range while outscoring ISU by 10.4 and outrebounding ISU by 7.5.
According to college basketball metrics analyst Ken Pomeroy, ISU gave up 116.1 points per 100 possessions this season, which is also the worst for ISU under Evans.
Very frustrating, ISU junior Geno Luzcando said Tuesday. We couldnt do almost anything. We couldnt rebound, we couldnt get together as a team, we didnt have a lot of chemistry.
Chemistry, the unmeasurable variable that effects teams unequally, may have been the underlying factor in ISUs demise. It was most evident in the teams final game, when facial expressions and lip-reading were enough to clarify a toxic level of tension.
When you have a lot of love for the game, sometimes tempers flare, ISU redshirt freshman Brandon Boyd said Tuesday. Our common goal was to win.
What about the relationship between coach and player? Most importantly, coach and star player? Evans and Telfair, who swore by a father-son like bond a year ago, were divided at times this season. Evans suspended Telfair for three games early in the season after Telfair was called for a technical foul in ISUs 85-51 loss at Utah State, a move that, while surprising, fit Evans mold of playing the game with respect, integrity and humility.
Its unclear whether the two ever reconciled. Telfairs social media posts wavered from frustration and regret to appreciation and nostalgia. He left Idaho State as one of the schools all-time greats, but also as a cryptic question mark, visibly checked out of some games and on the verge of tears after others.
Maybe Evans lost his way with his young superstar. Maybe there was a lack of senior leadership, a glue that perfectly completed the puzzle. Maybe the game is passing Evans by. Hes fresh off his worst record in 21 years as a Division I head coach.
Weve got to do some things a little differently within our program, Evans said. Weve got to get guys a little tougher, a little more determined, a little more disciplined, and theres only one person to blame for that and thats me. Thats my job.
Ive got to do a better job with a walk, talk, dress, work, communicate with one another, all those things. Those all seem like little things, but theyre important things. And maybe those things, to me this year, werent as important as they shouldve been. Those are the kind of things that we need to get changed a little bit.
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ISU MBB: Poor defense, chemistry lead to historically bad season for ISU - Idaho State Journal
Late-Breaking Abstract on LB-100, Lixte Biotechnology’s Protein Phosphatase 2A Inhibitor, in Combination with a PD-1 … – Benzinga
EAST SETAUKET, NY--(Marketwired - Mar 9, 2017) - Lixte Biotechnology Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: LIXT) announced that a late-breaking abstract entitled "Protein phosphatase 2A inhibition with a novel small molecule inhibitor, LB-100, achieves durable immune-mediated antitumor activity when combined with PD-1 blockade in a preclinical model" has been accepted for presentation as a poster (abstract number LB-193) at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017 in Washington, DC on April 4th.
Dr. John S. Kovach, Founder and CEO of Lixte, said, "The new preclinical research studies were done by Lixte and scientists at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement." Dr. Kovach continued, "LB-100 used alone has recently completed a Phase 1 trial in patients with advanced cancer (Chung 2016)."
About Lixte Biotechnology Holdings, Inc.
Lixte is a drug discovery company that uses biomarker technology to identify enzyme targets associated with serious common diseases and then design novel compounds to attack those targets. Lixte's product pipeline encompasses two major categories of compounds at various stages of pre-clinical and clinical development that the Company believes have broad therapeutic potential not only for cancer but also for other debilitating and life-threatening diseases.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For example, statements regarding the Company's financial position, business strategy and other plans and objectives for future operations, and assumptions and predictions about future product demand, supply, manufacturing, costs, marketing and pricing factors are all forward-looking statements. These statements are generally accompanied by words such as "intend," anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "potential(ly)," "continue," "forecast," "predict," "plan," "may," "will," "could," "would," "should," "expect" or the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. The Company believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, based on information available to it on the date hereof, but the Company cannot provide assurances that these assumptions and expectations will prove to have been correct or that the Company will take any action that the Company may presently be planning. However, these forward-looking statements are inherently subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results or experience may differ materially from those expected or anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, regulatory policies, available cash, research results, competition from other similar businesses, and market and general economic factors. This discussion should be read in conjunction with the Company's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission at http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml.
Additional information on the Company is available at http://www.lixte.com.
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Late-Breaking Abstract on LB-100, Lixte Biotechnology's Protein Phosphatase 2A Inhibitor, in Combination with a PD-1 ... - Benzinga
Oral delivery system could make vaccination needle-free – Science Daily
Patients could one day self-administer vaccines using a needleless, pill-sized technology that jet-releases a stream of vaccine inside the mouth, according to a proof-of-concept study conducted at UC Berkeley.
The study did not test vaccine delivery in people, but demonstrated that the technology, called MucoJet, is capable of delivering vaccine-sized molecules to immune cells in the mouths of animals. The technology is a step toward improved oral vaccine delivery, which holds the promise of building immunity in the mouth's buccal region of cells, where many infections enter the body. When patients hold the MucoJet against the inside of their cheek, the device releases a jet stream that directly targets the buccal region. This region is rich in immune cells but underutilized in immunology because of the challenge of efficiently penetrating the thick mucosal layer in this part of the oral cavity with existing technologies, such as the oral spray often used for influenza vaccination.
In laboratory and animal experiments, the research team showed that the MucoJet can deliver a high-pressure stream of liquid and immune system-triggering molecules that penetrate the mucosal layer to stimulate an immune response in the buccal region. The jet is pressurized, but not uncomfortably so, and would remove the sting of needles.
"The jet is similar in pressure to a water pick that dentists use," said Kiana Aran, who developed the technology while a postdoctoral scholar at Berkeley in the labs of Dorian Liepmann, a professor of mechanical and bioengineering, and Niren Murthy, a professor of bioengineering. Aran is now an assistant professor at the Keck Graduate Institute of Claremont University.
The portable technology, designed to be self-administered, stores vaccines in powder form and could one day enable vaccine delivery to remote locations, but years of further study are needed before the device would be commercially available.
The study will be published March 8 in the journal Science Translational Medicine and is available for download on EurekAlert!.
MucoJet is a 15-by-7-milimeter cylindrical, two-compartment plastic device. The solid components were 3D-printed from an inexpensive biocompatible and water-resistant plastic resin. The exterior compartment holds 250 mililiters of water. The interior compartment is composed of two reservoirs separated by a porous plastic membrane and a movable piston. One interior compartment is a vaccine reservoir, containing a 100-ml chamber of vaccine solution with a piston at one end and a sealed 200-micrometer (m) diameter delivery nozzle at the other end. The other interior compartment is the propellant reservoir, which contains a dry chemical propellant (citric acid and sodium bicarbonate) and is separated from the vaccine reservoir at one end by the built-in porous membrane and movable piston and is sealed at the other end from the exterior compartment with a dissolvable membrane
To administer the MucoJet, a patient clicks together the interior and exterior compartments. The membrane dissolves, water contacts the chemical propellant and the ensuing chemical reaction generates carbon dioxide gas. The gas increases the pressure in the propellant chamber, causing the piston to move. The free-moving piston ensures uniform movement of the ejected drug and blocks the exit of fizz from the carbon dioxide through the nozzle. When the pressure in the propellant chamber is high enough, the force on the piston breaks the nozzle seal of the vaccine reservoir. The vaccine solution is then ejected from the MucoJet nozzle, penetrates the mucosal layer of the buccal tissue, and delivers the vaccine to underlying vaccine targets, called antigen-presenting cells.
To test the MucoJet's delivery system, researchers designed a laboratory experiment in plastic dishes using mucosal layers and buccal tissues from pigs. They tested the MucoJet's ability to deliver ovalbumim, an immune stimulating protein, across the mucosal layer. The experiments showed an eightfold increase in the delivery of ovalbumin over the course of three hours compared to a control experiment of administering ovalbumim with a dropper (similar to how oral vaccines, such as for the flu, are administered today).
The researchers then tested different pressures of the vaccine jet and found that increasing the MucoJet output pressure increased the ovalbumin delivery to the tissue, indicating that the delivery efficiency improves with increased pressure.
"The pressure is very focused, the diameter of the jet is very small, so that's how it penetrates the mucosal layer," Aran said.
The researchers then tested the MucoJet's ability to deliver ovalbumim to buccal tissue in rabbits. The MucoJet delivery resulted in a sevenfold increase in the delivery of ovalbumin compared to control experiments with droppers. Animals treated with ovalbumin by MucoJet had key antibodies in their blood that were three orders of magnitude higher than in the blood from rabbits treated with ovalbumin by a dropper.
The study did not compare the MucoJet to vaccine delivery with a needle, but data suggests that the MucoJet can trigger an immune response that is as good or better than delivery with a needle, especially for mucosal pathogens.
The next step in MucoJet's development is to test the delivery of a real vaccine in larger animals. The researchers hope the MucoJet can be available in five to 10 years. They also hope to engineer a version of the MucoJet that can be swallowed and then release vaccines internally.
The researchers are considering other shapes, sizes and designs to simplify vaccine administration procedures and increase patient compliance, especially for children. For example, the MucoJet could be fabricated into a lollipop.
"Imagine if we could put the Mucojet in a lollipop and have kids hold it in their cheek," Aran said. "They wouldn't have to go to a clinic to get a vaccine."
Link:
Oral delivery system could make vaccination needle-free - Science Daily
Revolutionizing the fight against cancer – CW6 San Diego – CW6 News
(University of California San Diego) Theres a new tool that could revolutionize the fight against cancer. Researchers at UC San Diego have discovered that a blood test could detect the disease in its early stages.
Bioengineers at UC San Diego discovered this blood test by accident. The author of the study that was just released says the blood test can detect cancer and where a tumor is growing in the body. Its a discovery that could change how quickly doctors can make a cancer diagnosis.
In a bioengineering lab at UC San Diego, whats being called the holy grail of early cancer detection might have been discovered.
I think the potential is enormous, says Kun Zhang, PhD, UCSD Bioengineering Professor.
Researchers looked at the blood of cancer patients and found out that not only could they detect cancer, they could also locate where the tumor is growing in the body. The hope is the blood test can be used to cut out invasive procedures such as biopsies. Since the disease will be discovered so early, it will eliminate the need for chemotherapy and radiation.
Many of these therapies cannot completely cure cancer, adds Zhang, They can manage the disease for a certain period of time, and then you relapse, and it goes beyond your control.
Early detection can also help patients with fast growing cancers such as lung and colon, which are usually diagnosed when its too late.
If theres a way to detect there cancers early on when they are highly localized, then maybe a surgical procedure can completely get rid of these cancer cells, says the bioengineering professor.
Zhang says the blood test wouldnt be available to the public for a few more years. The next step is a large clinical study and then it would have to be approved by the FDA. .
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Revolutionizing the fight against cancer - CW6 San Diego - CW6 News