Select Page ::

Find Out Updated Report On Precision Medicine Software Market Along With COVID-19 Updates, Ongoing Trend, Scope, CAGR, Forecast Till 2027 And Top Key…

Posted on August 29, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Global Precision Medicine Software Market analysis 2020 covers the entire supply chain, focusing on supply, demand, trade and prices by country and product. Precision Medicine Software market is expected to keep experiencing a greater level of competition with a growing number of players focusing on securing a larger market share. It incorporates thorough business profiles of some of the prime vendors in the market. The report includes vast data relating to the recent discovery and technological expansions perceived in the market, wide-ranging with an examination of the impact of these intrusions on the markets future development.

Request A Free Sample Report@: https://www.itintelligencemarkets.com/request_sample.php?id=5216

Under the COVID-19 outbreak globally, this report includes a detailed and comprehensive overview of the competitive landscape and the administrative structure of the Global Precision Medicine Software Market. In this way, users gain an adequate understanding of the condition of drivers, restrictions, opportunities and strategies that affect the market. The report also includes both subjective and objective analyzes of the global market.

Companies considered and profiled in this market study: Syapse Inc. (US), 2bPrecise LLC (Israel), Foundation Medicine Inc. (US), Fabric Genomics (US), SOPHiA GENETICS SA (Switzerland), PierianDx Inc. (US), N-of-One Inc. (US), Human Longevity Inc. (US), Translational Software Inc. (US), Sunquest Information Systems Inc. (US), Gene42 Inc. (Canada), LifeOmic Health LLC (US), NantHealth Inc. (US), Tempus Labs Inc. (US), Flatiron Health Inc. (US), IBM Watson Group (US), and Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands) etc.,

North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa as well as Latin America are the most important regional markets. However, it is now also to be expected that some other regions will take the lead in the next few years and prove to be the most promising regional markets. The global Precision Medicine Software Market is also expected to grow rapidly in the near future due to the presence of a large number of people entering this market sector.

Get Maximum Discount on this report @: https://www.itintelligencemarkets.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=5216

Thus, a complete study of the competitive landscape of the Global Precision Medicine Software Market has been given, presenting insights into the company profiles, financial status, recent developments, mergers and acquisitions, and the SWOT analysis. This study also provides an in-depth analysis of the global market with future estimates to identify current trends and investment trends for the forecast year 2020-2027.

What Global Precision Medicine Software Market Report Offers?

For more information, please visit@: https://www.itintelligencemarkets.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=5216

* Dont miss the business opportunities in Precision Medicine Software Market. Speak to our analyst and get crucial industry insights that will help your business grow. If you have any special requirement, please let us know and we will offer the report as you want.

About Us:

At IT Intelligence Markets, we model all our work on our core philosophy that believes in customer satisfaction. We serve a global clientele by supplying market intelligence research reports after conducting exhaustive research. Our reports are replete with productive insights & recent market dynamics as the healthcare industry is constantly undergoing changes like ever-changing consumer preferences, supply channels and latest technologies. Our market research analysts not only investigate the market for drivers, restraints & challenges but also gauge the overall progress of the market by comparing chief market players.

Erika Thomas

US 76 AT US 19 & HWY 129 Murphy Highway,

Blairsville, GA, USA

[emailprotected]

Phone: +1 (888) 312-3102

https://www.itintelligencemarkets.com

More here:
Find Out Updated Report On Precision Medicine Software Market Along With COVID-19 Updates, Ongoing Trend, Scope, CAGR, Forecast Till 2027 And Top Key...

Microbiome Therapeutics Market: What’s the Future Potential? – Bulletin Line

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Roots Analysis has announced the addition of Microbiome Therapeutics Market, 2015-2030 report to their offering. The report provides a comprehensive study on the current landscape and the future outlook of the evolving pipeline of products in this area. While the field has garnered the interest of several companies, there are no approved microbiome drugs available in the market yet; Faecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT) is the only commercially available procedure till date. However, the development pipeline of microbiome therapeutics has several promising candidates that are likely to result in commercial success stories in the foreseen future.

Ishita Nanda, the principal analyst, said, Among other elements, the report also elaborates on new microbiome based diagnostic solutions being developed and the upcoming opportunities in this market for different stakeholders.One of the key objectives outlined for this report was to understand the future potential of the market. This was done by analyzing:

Nanda added, The study provides a detailed market forecast and opportunity analysis for the short-mid term (2015-2022) and long term (2022-2030). Our opinions and insights, presented in this study, were influenced by several discussions conducted with experts in this area. These included senior representatives at Assembly Biosciences, Da Volterra, Metabiomics, MicroBiome Therapeutics and Rebiotix.

The 218 page report includes detailed profiles and an assessment of the microbiome therapeutics programs of many companies including:

Details of some other firms developing microbiome related diagnostics and companion diagnostics have also been captured. Examples include (in alphabetical order) Admera Health, Biocartis, Enterome Bioscience, Human Longevity, Metabiomics, Microbiome Diagnostics, Viomer, Whole Biome.

For additional details, please visithttp://www.rootsanalysis.com/reports/view_document/microbiome-therapeutics-market-2015-2030/117.htmlor email[emailprotected]

About Roots Analysis

Roots Analysis is a specialist market research company, sharing fresh and independent perspectives in the bio-pharmaceutical industry. The in-depth research, analysis and insights are driven by an experienced leadership team which has gained many years of significant experience in this sector. If youd like us to help you with your growing business needs, get in touch at[emailprotected]

See original here:
Microbiome Therapeutics Market: What's the Future Potential? - Bulletin Line

What about My Rights? – Thrive Global

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Over the past week I have been sent countless videos and links of people talking about civil rights and how Melbournians are at the effect of a dictatorial government that is not just infringing on our civil liberties but taking them away.

I am learning, from American commentators, how our government is invading homes and ignoring the legal requirement for warrants, to arrest people breaking public directives during the stage 4 lockdown.

Right through this whole Covid-19 drama, I have seen hundreds of posts and online videos of people preaching from the rooftops about civil liberties, personal rights, and freedom.

As I ran this morning, this weighed heavily on me, and I knew I needed to write.

We human beings do not do too well on our own. We are family and community creatures. I have read many health studies over the years exploring the devastating effects of loneliness. Further, longevity studies such as those that explored the lives of women in Okinawa in Japan, life Dan Buettners Blue Zones, have shown the health enhancing powers of close friendships and community.

Further, their have been hundreds of studies, for example House et al in the US, that demonstrated how people who were involved in some form of community service at least once per month had a significantly lower risk of heart disease than the average for US society. In other words, taking care of the needs of others is good for our health.

For a community to work, every person in that community must contribute. There is a responsibility for everyone in that community to do their bit.

I remember back in the 90s when I was working as a Conditioning Coach at an AFL Club. The clubs number 1 recruit was languishing in the seconds. He was best on the ground every week but was continuously overlooked for the senior team. I asked the head coach why and he said, Because he is playing in defence, and whilst he is gathering a huge number of possessions each week, his opponents are doing a lot of damage. He has not learned how to play a defensive role.

I realised the message was not getting through, perhaps because the way the coach was articulating the message was not being understood by the player. So, I took him out for coffee and a chat.

During the chat I asked him to imagine what it might be like to live in a small community where everyone had a hut, the group grew food, and everyone had animals. One of the challenges in the community was the animals droppings, and they would be all over the paths and even on doorsteps. A daily chore was shovelling the shit. I asked him to imagine that he was the Chief or the Mayor. Even though he is the Mayor, and has an important role, he too has to shovel the shit as well as doing all the glorious things. If not, you end up with a lot of shit on your doorstep.

I let him contemplate all that and then shared, Mate, youre are doing all the glorious stuff, but you are not shovelling your share of the shit. His eyes went wide, and the message landed. The following week, he was still best on the ground, but his opponent was completely ineffective. A week later he went into the senior team and went on to become an outstanding footballer.

He was only interested at the time in his freedom to play football the way he wanted, the way he enjoyed it. However, he was ignoring his responsibilities to the team.

The two less glorious terms we do not hear about much are civil responsibility and civil service.

Right now, more than ever, Melbourne, and many other cities around the world, needs its citizens to place more attention on civil responsibility and civil service, to guarantee our future civil liberties.

Melbournians are being asked to shovel their share of the shit, because we didnt do it very well in June and July. And most of us are willingly doing so, while the rest of the world seems to be freaking out.

Wearing a protective face mask is an act of civil service and civil responsibility. It is not about giving uprights.

I feel that for the future of the world, we need to start talking more about civil responsibility and service and less about civil liberties. There has been way too much Me and not enough We. As they say, if you take the letter I our of Illness and replace it with We, you get Wellness.

But while I am on my soapbox this morning, Id like to address something else.

I am in a Football Tipping competition with some of my old Primary School friends. We are a tight group and take care of each other. There are some big hearts in this group of people and some crazy senses of humour.

In one of the seasons, one of the guys suggested the AFL was rigged and a robust conversation soon caught fire. After some time, I chimed in and shared that having worked in the inner sanctum of AFL Clubs, I thought it impossible. Do you know how many people you would have to convince to completely shut down their own moral code, and to keep an awful secret for life? I asked. Just contemplating this question alone makes you realise that it would not be possible for the AFL to be rigged.

The same goes for Covid-19. Sure, there are corporate interests that want to cash in on it, and there are huge egos out there who want to be the one to save the world. But that is how humans have operated for centuries. It is what makes the human race so colourful and fascinating.

But to even think that it would be possible to get tens of thousands of people to become willing conspirators, and to keep an ugly secret concealed for a lifetime, is the stuff of B Grade movies. It is delusional thinking at its very best!

My invitation to everyone is to start looking for the good in everyone. Get behind our leaders. This is a new and challenging situation. They are bound to make mistakes. Cut them some slack and lets all keep going. We will get to the end of this, then we can set to repairing what we have done to create it in the first place. If you start doing your homework you will realise that this virus, like the bushfires from the start of the year, is a product of what we have been carelessly doing to our environment.

To fix that, we are going to have to give up some of our self-proclaimed liberties and take on some serious civil responsibility and deliver a great deal of genuine civil service.

Are you up for it?

Researcher John Craig Venter Is Awarded the 2020 Edogawa-NICHE Prize for His Accomplishment in Human Genome Research – Financialbuzz.com

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The Edogawa NICHE Prize for the year 2020 has been awarded to Dr. John Craig Venter for his contribution to research and development pertaining to the Human genome. This honor reflects Dr. Venters lifetime accomplishments in the power of the genomics and specifically in the identification of the human genome which has radically transformed healthcare according to Prof. Gary Levy, chair, Edogawa NICHE awards committee (www.edogawanicheprize.org).

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200814005092/en/

Dr. John Craig Venter, recipient of the 2020 Edogawa NICHE Prize, for his contribution to research and development pertaining to the Human genome. (Photo: Business Wire)

Edogawa NICHE Prize was Instituted in 2018, by the Jinseisha trust, and the Nichi-In Centre for Regenerative Medicine (NCRM), which honours scientists or clinicians whose contributions lead to the development of prevention, diagnosis or treatment of any disease, through an inter-disciplinary approach. Alumni of the Fujio Cup Quiz, a part of NCRM NICHE, (www.ncrmniche.org), have priority for nomination, a unique feature of this prize. Previous awardees include Prof James Till, University of Toronto, Canada for discovery of stem cells (2018) and Dr. Steven Rosenberg, National Institutes of Health, USA for his groundbreaking work on T-lymphocyte immunotherapy (2019).

Dr. Venter was born in Salt Lake City Utah on October 14, 1946. He started his college education at the College of San Mateo, CA and later studied Biochemistry in University of California, San Diego under biochemist Nathan O. Kaplan. After obtaining a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from UCSD, he became a Professor at the State University of New York and joined the National Institute of Health in 1984. He has founded Celera Genomics, The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR), J.Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and co-founded Human Longevity Inc and Synthetic Genomics.

His path breaking sequencing of the first human genome with the Human Genome Project further progressed to transfecting a cell with a synthetic chromosome, a feat that has opened up opportunities to develop novel solutions not only in healthcare, but also in environmental issues and energy domain.

The awarding of the Edogawa NICHE prize to Dr Venter is the most recent in a string of honors including United States Medal of Science (2008), Gardner Foundation International Award (2002), Paul Erlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize (2001) and the King Faisal International Award of Science (2001). He was listed on Time Magazines list of the most influential people in the world.

The award ceremony date will be announced later.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200814005092/en/

Queries to:

Samuel JK Abraham

info@gncorporation.com

Follow this link:
Researcher John Craig Venter Is Awarded the 2020 Edogawa-NICHE Prize for His Accomplishment in Human Genome Research - Financialbuzz.com

L-Nutra and FEAST Announce New Joint Effort to Help Bridge Food and Nutrition Disparities in Under Resourced Communities – thepress.net

Posted on July 29, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

LOS ANGELES, July 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- L-Nutra, a global leader in nutri-technology, and FEAST, a non-profit dedicated to community health and wellness, today announced a new joint effort to address health disparities in underserved Los Angeles communities through a year-long series of wellness programs, food education, and nutrition information that will take place in community settings to address unhealthy eating habits and inequitable food environments in order to create steps toward healthier lives.

"Nutrition is our passion and we believe everyone, regardless of where they live, should have the access to the information and resources to eat better, be healthier and live longer. At L-Nutra, we are working to enhance human healthspan up to 100 years," said Joseph Antoun MD, CEO of L-Nutra. "FEAST is a dedicated organization addressing long-standing nutrition disparities with the infrastructure to make a difference through targeted efforts in these communities. As part of the joint effort, L-Nutra will commit our resources to support FEAST and provide our experts and knowledge to build on the organization's programs, reach and effectiveness."

Food and nutrition disparities are long-standing problems across the U.S. and have worsened during the COVID-19 public health crisis, exacerbating inequalities that factor into systemic health gaps. According to new researchby economists at Northwestern University based on Census Bureau data, nearly four in 10 Black and Hispanic households with children are struggling to feed their families during the coronavirus pandemic.

L-Nutra and FEAST aim to work together to bridge nutrition gaps and support those who are in need, specifically those that depend on food banks and live in food deserts. L-Nutra will supportFEAST's 16-week wellness programs this year in LA that incorporate food education, including nutrition information, recipes and cooking demonstrations, access to fresh whole foods through a weekly grocery scholarship, and support through peer-to-peer sharing circles designed to uncover the underlying causes of current eating habits and create steps forwardtoward better behaviours and healthier lives. As part of this joint effort, L-Nutra will immediately provide direct program support to FEAST's virtual Week of Wellness and annual Fall Fundraising event. FEAST's Week of Wellness, July 27th through 31st, provides daily morning mindful activities, midday fitness activities and early evening healthy recipes, all accessible for free through the organization's Instagram live streams, https://www.instagram.com/feast_for_all/.

FEAST's wellness programs, offered in English and Spanish, have moved to virtual platforms during the pandemic and provide weekly food boxes delivered directly to participants. Delivering essential food items to those that need it most increases food security and decreases their exposure to COVID-19, as participants do not have to leave their homes for their boxes.

"At FEAST, we have made strategic adjustments to ensure the safety of those we serve while maintaining our resolve and commitment to get them the education, resources, and food they and their families need," said Dana Rizer, FEAST executive director. "We are thrilled to have this joint effort with L-Nutra. The nutrition expertise L-Nutra brings, along with their commitment to healthy lifestyle solutions to increase longevity, is a perfect match to help us advance health and wellness in under resourced communities through the power of healthy foods and human connection."

L-Nutra also announced a separate initiative to donate Fast Bar products to hospital staff working throughout underserved L.A. communities, which have been hit hard by COVID-19. This is follow-up to a Fast Bar product donation the company made to several hospitals in L.A., San Diego, Sacramento, New Jersey and New York in April. Fast Bar is a premium nutrition bar that provides nourishment and energy.

"Medical professionals throughout L.A. are working extended hours to treat COVID-19 patients and to save lives. They are our heroes. We hope this donation will help them get through long, demanding days," said Dr. Antoun.

About FEASTEstablished in 2013, FEAST's mission is to promote health and wellness in communities through the power of healthy foods and human connection. FEAST's comprehensive programs combine practical tools like nutrition education and healthy shopping skills with food access, peer-support and community engagement to increase individual wellness so participants can live full, healthy lives. FEAST has impacted the lives of thousands of individuals in Southern California, New York City, and Lincoln, Nebraska. For more information, visit at https://feastforall.org/

About L-NutraL-Nutra is leading the discovery, design,and commercialization of novel,plant-based nutrition programs and therapeutics to enhance human healthspan up to 100 years. L-Nutra translates the science behind ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet and Nutrition For Longevitywith breakthrough discoveries in cellular-level nutrient signalling pathways to promote healthy aging technologies and to advance the development of therapeutic solutions for age-related diseases. For more information visit http://www.l-nutra.com

Link:
L-Nutra and FEAST Announce New Joint Effort to Help Bridge Food and Nutrition Disparities in Under Resourced Communities - thepress.net

Living long and happy lives – Manila Bulletin

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

CHANGING WORLD

(Part 1)

Modesty aside, at age 81 I think I have stronger immunity against COVID-19 than many people I know in their fifties or sixties who have been smoking or drinking heavily, sleeping only six hours a day on the average, and indulging in unhealthy diets. I have good genes (my mother lived up to 102 years of age). I have tried to live a healthy life style at least for the last 20 years of my life. That is why I felt aggrieved when under the General Community Quarantine (GCQ), I could not move as freely as those below 60 years of age. I really think there has been no scientific foundation for the classification of people by age for purposes of the various stages of quarantine under the global pandemic. I was glad to learn that the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared that 65 years of age is still considered young. According to new research done, human age is now divided as follows: 0 to 17 years of age underage; 18 to 65 years of age youth/young individuals; 66 to 79 middle aged; 80 to 99 years old elderly/senior; and 100+ years of age long-lived senior.

In fact, medical research also has shown that the most dangerous health-related threats to life occur during the age range of 70 to 80. If one survives this age range, the probability of his living much longer is quite high. We are seeing this in Japan where more and more people, especially women, are living beyond 100 years.

I recently read a review of a book by an economist and a management expert, respectively, Andrew J Scott and Lynda Gatton. The former is professor of economics at London Business School and a consulting scholar at Stanford universitys Centre on Longevity, and the latter is a professor of management practice at the London Business School. They wrote The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World. Their previous work, The 100-Year Life provided very valuable insights into the phenomenon of increased longevity. The authors have exploded the myth of the so-called three-stage life. Although speaking of three stages of life made sense before more and more people are able to live up to their eighties and beyond, today these three stages hardly make sense.

When fewer people lived beyond their sixties, the first stage was traditionally spent growing up and getting educated. The second involved working in an occupation or profession, earning money and starting a family. The third, usually at the start of their sixties, was devoted to what then was called retirement. Today, the average life expectancy of Filipinos is 71.16 years (2019). The Filipino female lives on the average to 75.39 years as compared to the male life expectancy of 67.12 years. Comparative figures in more developed countries such as Japan and most Western European countries are beyond 80 years of age.

As Scott and Gatton wrote in their books, the three-stage life generally worked in the old days when life expectancy was shorter. It allowed many to support a family, buy a house, and look forward to a pension. Today, relatively fewer young people can afford to purchase a house. Many of the elderly, even in advanced countries like the United States, do not have adequate pensions. It is clear that the three-stage life has broken down.

Governments, realizing this change, are raising retirement age from 65 to 70. Unfortunately, the majority of employers are acting as though the three-stage life is still applicable to the present generations. In the Philippines, either by choice or necessity, complete retirement from work is the exception rather than the rule among those who officially retire at age either at 60 or 65. I am no exception. As long as they are healthy enough, people of my generation continue to be employed, many of them still receiving remuneration for their work as consultants, members of the boards of directors of different corporations, part-time professors or instructors, and a good number in voluntary work in charitable foundations or associations.

We continue to work because we have been advised by medical experts that stopping to be engaged in some work or another is the surest way to have both our body and our mind deteriorate rapidly. Keeping ourselves active in some form of work or another is necessary for bodily and mental health. But more importantly, we believe what St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Laborem Exercens (On Human Work): Work is a good thing for man a good thing for his humanity because through work, man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfilment as a human being. In a sense, he becomes more a human being. The knowledge that by means of work man shares in the work of creation constitutes the most profound motive for understanding it.

The Saint of Ordinary Life St. Josemaria Escriva as St. John Paul II called him, had preached and written most eloquently about the value of work to human fulfilment and happiness. It was from him that I learned that no one ever retires from work. The spirituality of the Catholic institution Opus Dei that he founded is very much identified with the sanctification of ordinary work: that the ordinary Christian attains sanctity in the middle of the world primarily through work by sanctifying the work itself, sanctifying himself as he works, and sanctifying others through his work.

In one of his widely read books, Christ Is Passing By, he wrote: Work is part and parcel of mans life on earth. It involves effort, weariness, exhaustion: signs of the suffering and struggle which accompany human existence and which point to the reality of sin and the need for redemption But in itself work is not a penalty or a curse or a punishment: those who speak of it that way have not understood sacred Scripture properly.

It is time for us Christians to shout from the rooftops that work is a gift from God and that it makes no sense to classify men differently, according to their occupation, as if some jobs were nobler than others. Work, all work, bears witness to the dignity of man, to his dominion over creation. It is an opportunity to develop ones personality. It is a bond of union with others, the way to support ones family, a means of aiding in the improvement of the society in which we live and in the progress of all humanityFor a Christian these horizons extend and grow wider. For work is a participation in the creative work of God. When He created man and blessed him, He said: Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of Heaven, and all living animals on the earth.

These are some of the most eloquent words ever written about work which should convince anyone never to stop working no matter how old he may be. Retirement should not be in the vocabulary of anyone who is convinced that work is the best way to carry out Gods will for him on earth so as to be eternally happy with Him in Heaven. To be continued.

See the original post here:
Living long and happy lives - Manila Bulletin

Opinion: Filipino The Kingmaker Resonates in Thailand, Too – Khaosod English

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Recently watching The Kingmaker, an American documentary film about the life of Imelda Marcos was like being transported to the Philippines. One cant help looking back to Thailand to compare as well.

Think about the divisive person that is Imelda Marcos, and her late husband, dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos. Choose your favourite divisive Thai political figures and compare. Thaksin or Prayut, anyone?

Think about how many years Thailand has been obsessed about Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck. Thaksin was elected as prime minister in 2001, in case you no longer remember, and Thai society has been obsessed about him for nearly two decades now.

The youth now spear-heading anti-government protests are really the post-Thaksin-Yingluck generation, however. Unlike the redshirts, yellowshirts and multi-color shirts, the young are definitely not obsessed about bringing Thaksin or Yingluck back from exile or having them extradited from Dubai or wherever they may happen to be residing.

Nevertheless, many from the older generations continued to be still either rabidly pro-or-against Thaksin-Yingluck. And the division has severed friendships and even family ties over the past near two decades.

In the Philippines, Imelda Marcos became the republics First Lady in 1965 and lasted in that position until her husband and she were ousted by a popular revolt in 1986 and hastily left for exile.

She returned to her home country in 1991, two years after her husband, ex-President Marcos passed away.

At 91, Imelda tried and failed to propel her only son, Bonbong Marcos, in a bid to be elected as Vice President in 2016, the same elections that saw Rodrigo Duterte elected to the Malacanang Palace.

With such enduring political longevity spanning six decades, its no surprise that Imelda is a much larger than life figure. The 2019 film, directed by Lauren Greenfield suggested at the end of the film that Imelda dreams of making her son the next president or the Republic of the Philippines continued. At 91, perhaps shes running out of time. Thaksin at 70, still has a good decade or two to seek political revenge.

Readers beware, I by no means try to imply that Thaksin is comparable to Ferdinand E Marcos, who ruled by martial law for nearly nine years from 1972 to 1981. They both have been accused of massive corruptions, however.

And while Marcos rule was marked by 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, Thaksin had his war of drugs that according to Human Rights Watch, saw 2,275 extra-judicially killed when he was Thailands premier. Horrible these figures may be, the current Philippine President Duterte, has already surpassed both and his war on drugs campaign saw over 30,000 people killed extra-judicially.

The second point that led me to reflect back at Thailand after seeing the film was the US support for dictatorship during the Cold War (and beyond). If it suits Americas national interests, they have no qualm supporting a dictator here and there. Fearing communist takeover, both Marcos and Imelda were beneficiaries of US-backing for decades including the near-decade when martial law was imposed.

Historian Jose Raymund Canoy, author of An Illustrated History of the Philippines noted that: Although the administration of President Jimmy Carter emphasized the promotion of human rights worldwide, only limited pressure was exerted on Marcos to improve the behaviour of the military in rural areas and to end the death-squad murders of political opponents.

Another Filipino author, Luis H. Francia, wrote in his book

Another Filipino author, Luis H. Francia, wrote in his book A History of the Philippines: From Indios Bravos to Filipinos that Marcoss martial law exposed the darkness at the heart of the US foreign policy.

In spite of the rhetoric, democracy was hardly the most important issue for the U S. government when it came to its client states, Francia wrote.

Here, the film could have done a much better job in highlighting this expedient relationship. In Thailand, dictators like Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat were also like Marcos Americas boy. Today, we can perhaps substitute fears of communist taking over Thailand or the Philippines to that of Americas fears for China taking over Thailand and the Philippines. Then you can guess how the US will behave vis--vis dictator or hybrid dictator.

Back to Imelda, the chummy and mutually-beneficial relationship with America turned sour by February 1986 after a growing popular uprising was about to sweep the Marcos couple from power.

In the film, Imelda accuses the US government of kidnapping them to facilitate a regime change.

Its not true that we flee from our country, Imelda recalled in the film. We were kidnapped.

Many believe the Marcos were lied to by the US who told the dictator couple that they would be flown to Ilocos Norte, the home province and political base of Ferdinand Marcos. Instead, they eventually end up in exile in Hawaii where Ferdinand would die in 1989.

Last but not least, at least the film had unprecedented access to Imelda and yet contained counter narratives of others including from Beth Day Romulo, American wife of the late long-time foreign secretary Carlos P. Romulo.

The film was screened in the Philippines. Now I wonder if there will be a critical documentary about Thai leaders (named your favourite one!) who are still alive, ever produced and screened in Thailand.

In the Philippines, even God can be criticized. I cant say its the same for Thailand, as even some mortals are more godlike here.

Continued here:
Opinion: Filipino The Kingmaker Resonates in Thailand, Too - Khaosod English

Webinar to look at putting technology front and center in defining ‘sustainable’ – ASU Now

Posted on July 28, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Over the past few decades the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development have been weaving their way into the fabric of various branches of engineering. Advocates declare that being sustainable should, in fact, be the guiding light of all engineering endeavors.

Yet some proponents in the field contend that sustainability remains a largely ambiguous idea. They say it lacks distinct frameworks for defining precisely what it means in utilitarian terms, and thus hinders the development of consistent guidelines for implementation. An upcoming webinar The Overlooked Role of Technology in the Sustainability Movement: A Pedagogical Framework for Engineering Education will focus on the need for engineering educators to emphasize the importance of technology in shaping the design and construction of sustainable systems. Graphic by Rhonda Hitchcock-Mast/ASU Download Full Image

Those calling for more specificity in defining the role of engineers include T. Agami Reddy and Brad Allenby, professors in theIra A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. They assert that the general perception of sustainability has not sufficiently evolved beyond its origins in environmental and social movements to encompass todays technological advances.

A major impediment to remedying that drawback, as Allenby and Reddy see it, is a failure to properly integrate an understanding of technology and technological development into the core precepts of what constitutes sustainability.

Technological advances are shaping society more quickly and in more fundamental ways than ever, the professors say. So, in their view, sustainable engineering cant fully transition from a broad philosophy into a deep-rooted industry practice without clearly detailing how sustainability can be achieved in rigorously technical ways.

That progress is hampered not only by a lack of understanding of the importance of assimilating technological considerations into what constitutes sustainability, they say, but also an inability to translate the vague assertions about sustainability by its advocates into the concrete design objectives and constraints familiar to engineers.

Reddy and Allenby will present their views on this challenge during an Aug. 11 webinar presented by the Metis Center for Infrastructure and Sustainable Engineering at ASU and moderated by the centers director, Fulton Schools Associate Professor Mikhail Chester. The Metis Center is involved in research, teaching, outreach and public service to provide a basis for understanding, designing and managing complex integrated built, human and natural systems.

The Zoom webcast The Overlooked Role of Technology in the Sustainability Movement: A Pedagogical Framework for Engineering Education will focus on the close association between sustainability and engineering, and suggest a quantitative framework based on a short list of metrics for engineers to evaluate their progress toward sustainability goals.

Another focus will be the subject of developing the metrics necessary to ensure technological progress is integrated into the aspirations of the sustainability enterprise. There will also be discussion on developing approaches to preparing students for the changes that would emerge from such a refocusing of sustainable engineering.

We have to figure out what sustainability means when you translate it into the actual technical practice of engineering, Allenby said. But after you decide what that is, then you need the masterplan for how you are going to teach this type of thinking to students and industry professionals or the change in practice is not going to happen in the real world.

Reddy hopes the webinar will foster dialog and provide a pathway for engineers to become more fundamentally involved with social and environmental scientists in both defining sustainability goals and implementing sustainable solutions.

The idea for the webinar came from Professor Ram Pendyala, director of one of the six Fulton Schools, the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment. Allenby and Reddy teach in the school. Reddy also teaches in The Design School in ASUs Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Pendyala was motivated by reading a research paper in the Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities authored by the two professors, as well as a paper in the same journal authored by Reddy on the concept of resilience in engineering pursuits. Both papers examine issues that are subjects of the webinar.

We have done a lot of research in sustainable engineering, and many of us have integrated sustainable engineering concepts and thoughts into our research in some fashion, Pendyala said. But we havent necessarily done the same in our teaching enterprise, and I am not convinced that we are sufficiently preparing our students to think about sustainability-related implications of rapidly emerging technologies, designs, energy systems and so on.

Pendyala encouraged Professor Matthew Fraser, associate director of the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, to work with Reddy and Allenby to organize a webinar advancing new paradigms in engineering education.

We hope the event will help faculty from ASU and other universities use insights from the latest research to improve education for the next generation of sustainability and technology leaders, Fraser said.

Allenbys career-long work has contributed to defining sustainability as an academic discipline and promoting it as a vital industry practice.

Twenty-five years ago, Allenby and Tom Graedel, now a professor emeritus at the Yale School of the Environment at Yale University, co-authored Industrial Ecology the first textbook on that then-emerging field, which set the stage for the birthing of sustainability engineering.

Several years later Allenby wrote a second textbook, Industrial Ecology: Policy Framework and Implementation, focusing on the social, economic and policy implications of industrial ecology that vigorously thrust the field into the sustainability realm. He and Graedel later merged the two areas in the 2010 textbook Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering.

Two years later, Allenby authored The Theory and Practice of Sustainable Engineering, providing a detailed guide for schools to create courses in the subject.

Reddys research has long focused on solar energy equipment and systems, along with energy efficiency and conservation in buildings and related systems, and more recently on how to model and evaluate energy systems for sustainability and resilience. He holds the title of SRP Professor of Energy and Environment, a position supported by Salt River Project, one of Arizonas largest power and water utilities.

Through his experience, Reddy says he realizes the importance of emphasizing to students the fundamental techno-centric concepts of sustainability relevant to building structures and producing systems in ways that will meet goals related to functionality, resilience and longevity the three primary objectives of sustainability.

Our challenge is to quantify how to accomplish those things in actual on-the-ground engineering work, Reddy said.

At the same time, its critical that the education of todays students keeps pace with any reconceptualizing of sustainable engineering, Allenby said.

That will necessitate equipping aspiring engineers with more knowledge of artificial intelligence, data science and other cutting-edge technologies and methods to produce the algorithms and design strategies that guide todays engineering efforts, Reddy and Allenby say.

The professors note they have geared the webinar presentation to students as well as college faculty members and industry professionals. Reddy and Allenby will present their own perspectives on how to realign education in sustainability and then lead discussion on the topic with the audience.

The webinar will be from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, Aug. 11.Register for the event.

Read the original:
Webinar to look at putting technology front and center in defining 'sustainable' - ASU Now

The genetic basis of bats’ superpowers revealed – Newswise

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Newswise For the first time, the raw genetic material that codes for bats' unique adaptations and superpowers such as the ability to fly, to use sound to move effortlessly in complete darkness, to survive and tolerate deadly diseases, to resist ageing and cancer - has been fully revealed.

Bat1K (Bat1K.com), a global consortium of scientists dedicated to sequencing the genomes of every one of the 1421 living bat species, has generated and analyzed six highly accurate bat genomes that are ten times more complete than any bat genome published to date, in order to uncover bats' unique traits.

"Given these exquisite bat genomes, we can now better understand how bats tolerate viruses, slow down ageing, and have evolved flight and echolocation. These genomes are the tools needed to identify the genetic solutions evolved in bats that ultimately could be harnessed to alleviate human ageing and disease," Emma Teeling, University College Dublin, Co-Founding Director of Bat1K and Senior Author.

To generate these exquisite bat genomes, the team used the newest technologies of the DRESDEN-concept Genome Center, a shared technology resource in Dresden, to sequence the bat's DNA, and generated new methods to assemble these pieces into the correct order and to identify the genes present.

"Using the latest DNA sequencing technologies and new computing methods for such data, we have 96 to 99 percent of each bat genome in chromosome level reconstructions - an unprecedented quality akin to for example the current human genome reference which is the result of over a decade of intensive "finishing" efforts. As such, these bat genomes provide a superb foundation for experimentation and evolutionary studies of bats' fascinating abilities and physiological properties" Eugene Myers, Director of Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, and the Center for Systems Biology, Dresden, Germany, Senior Author.

Relationship to other mammals

The team compared these bat genomes against 42 other mammals to address the unresolved question of where bats are located within the mammalian tree of life. Using novel phylogenetic methods and comprehensive molecular data sets, the team found the strongest support for bats being most closely related to a group called Ferreuungulata that consists of carnivores (which includes dogs, cats and seals, among other species), pangolins, whales and ungulates (hooved mammals).

To uncover genomic changes that contribute to the unique adaptations found in bats, the team systematically searched for gene differences between bats and other mammals, identifying regions of the genome that have evolved differently in bats and the loss and gain of genes that may drive bats' unique traits.

"Our genome scans revealed changes in hearing genes that may contribute to echolocation, which bats use to hunt and navigate in complete darkness. Furthermore, we found expansions of anti-viral genes, unique selection on immune genes, and loss of genes involved in inflammation in bats. These changes may contribute to bats' exceptional immunity and points to their tolerance of coronaviruses." Michael Hiller, Max Planck Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, and the Center for Systems Biology, Dresden, Senior Author.

Tolerance against viruses

The team also found evidence that bats' ability to tolerate viruses is reflected in their genomes. The exquisite genomes revealed "fossilised viruses", evidence of surviving past viral infections, and showed that bat genomes contained a higher diversity than other species providing a genomic record of historical tolerance to viral infection.

Given the quality of the bat genomes the team uniquely identified and experimentally validated several non-coding regulatory regions that may govern bats' key evolutionary innovations.

"Having such complete genomes allowed us to identify regulatory regions that control gene expression that are unique to bats. Importantly we were able to validate unique bat microRNAs in the lab to show their consequences for gene regulation. In the future we can use these genomes to understand how regulatory regions and epigenomics contributed to the extraordinary adaptations we see in bats," says Sonja Vernes, Co-Founding Director Bat 1K, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Senior Author.

This is just a beginning. The remaining ~1400 living bat species exhibit an incredible diversity in ecology, longevity, sensory perception and immunology, and numerous questions still remain regarding the genomic basis of these spectacular features. Bat1K will answer these questions as more and more exquisite bat genomes are sequenced, further uncovering the genetic basis of bats' rare and wonderful superpowers.

###

Originally posted here:
The genetic basis of bats' superpowers revealed - Newswise

How one hour of slow breathing changed my life – The Guardian

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

The place looked like something out of an old horror film: all paint-chipped walls, dusty windows, and menacing shadows cast by moonlight. I walked through a gate, up a flight of creaking steps, and knocked on the door.

When it swung open, a woman in her 30s with woolly eyebrows and oversize white teeth welcomed me inside. She asked me to take off my shoes, then led me to a cavernous living room, its ceiling painted sky blue with wispy clouds. I took a seat beside a window that rattled in the breeze and watched through jaundiced streetlight as others walked in. A guy with prisoner eyes. A blonde woman with an off-centre bindi on her forehead.

Id come here on the recommendation of my doctor, whod told me: A breathing class could help. It could help strengthen my failing lungs, calm my frazzled mind, maybe give me perspective.

For the past few months, Id been going through a rough patch. My job was stressing me out and my 130-year-old house was falling apart. Id just recovered from pneumonia, which Id also had the year before, and the year before that. I was spending most of my time at home wheezing, working and eating three meals a day out of the same bowl while hunched over week-old newspapers on the couch. I was in a rut physically, mentally and otherwise. After a few months of living this way, I took my doctors advice and signed up for an introductory course in breathing to learn a technique called Sudarshan Kriya.

At 7pm, the bushy-browed woman locked the front door, sat in the middle of the group, inserted a cassette tape into a beat-up boom box, and pressed play. She told us to close our eyes. The voice instructed us to inhale slowly through our noses, then to exhale slowly. To focus on our breath. I kept breathing, but nothing happened. No calmness swept over me, no tension released from my tight muscles. Nothing. Ten, maybe 20 minutes passed. I started getting annoyed and a bit resentful that Id chosen to spend my evening inhaling dusty air on the floor of an old Victorian house. I thought about getting up and leaving, but I didnt want to be rude. Then something happened. I wasnt conscious of any transformation taking place. I never felt myself relax or the swarm of nagging thoughts leave my head. But it was as if Id been taken from one place and deposited somewhere else. It happened in an instant.

There was something wet on my head. I lifted my hand to wipe it off and noticed my hair was sopping. I ran my hand down my face, felt the sting of sweat in my eyes and tasted salt. I looked down at my torso and noticed sweat blotches on my sweater and jeans. Everyone had been covered in jackets and hoodies to keep warm. But I had somehow sweated through my clothes as if Id just run a marathon.

The instructor approached and asked if I was OK, if Id been sick or had a fever. I told her I felt perfectly fine. The next day I felt even better. As advertised, there was a feeling of calm and quiet that I hadnt experienced in a long time. I slept well. The little things in life didnt bother me as much. The tension was gone from my shoulders and neck. This lasted a few days before the feeling faded out.

What exactly had happened? How did sitting cross- legged in a strange house and breathing for an hour trigger such a profound reaction?

I returned to the breathing class the following week: same experience, fewer waterworks. I didnt mention any of it to family members or friends. But I worked to understand what had happened, and I spent the next several years trying to figure it out. Over that span of time, I fixed up my house, sorted myself out and got a lead that might answer some of my questions about breathing. I went to Greece to write a story on freediving, the ancient practice of swimming hundreds of feet below the waters surface on a single breath of air.

There are as many ways to breathe as there are foods to eat, said one female instructor who had held her breath for more than 8 minutes and once dived below 300ft. And each way we breathe will affect our bodies in different ways. Surely someone had studied the effects of this conscious breathing on landlubbers? I found a librarys worth of material. The problem was, the sources were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old.

Seven books of the Chinese Tao dating back to around 400BC focussed entirely on breathing, how it could kill us or heal us, depending on how we used it. Even earlier, Hindus considered breath and spirit the same thing and described elaborate practices that were meant to balance breathing and preserve both physical and mental health. Then there were the Buddhists, who used breathing not only to lengthen their lives but to reach higher planes of consciousness. Breathing, for all these people, for all these cultures, was powerful medicine.

I looked for some kind of verification of these claims in more recent research in pulmonology, the medical discipline that deals with the lungs and the respiratory tract, but found next to nothing. According to what I did find, breathing technique wasnt important. Many doctors, researchers and scientists I interviewed confirmed this position. Twenty times a minute, 10 times, through the mouth, nose or breathing tube, its all the same. The point is to get air in and let the body do the rest. But I kept digging and slowly a story began to unfold. As I found out, I was not the only person whod recently started asking these questions. While I was paging through texts and interviewing freedivers and super-breathers, scientists at Harvard, Stanford and other renowned institutions were confirming some of the wildest stories Id been hearing.

But their work wasnt happening in the pulmonology labs. Pulmonologists, I learned, work mainly on specific maladies of the lungs collapse, cancer, emphysema. Were dealing with emergencies, one veteran pulmonologist told me. Thats how the system works.

No, this breathing research has been taking place elsewhere: in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, the easy chairs of dental offices and the safe rooms of mental hospitals. Not the kinds of places where youd expect to find cutting-edge research into a biological function.

Few of these scientists set out to study breathing. But, somehow, in some way, breathing kept finding them. They discovered that our capacity to breathe has changed through the long processes of human evolution and that the way we breathe has become markedly worse since the dawn of the industrial age. Theyd also discovered that with some concerted practice we could restore our breathing and when we did we could take control of certain functions of our nervous and immune systems. The ways in which we took those 25,000 breaths we take each day some 30lb of air that enters and exits our lungs was in many ways as important as what we ate, how much we exercised, or whatever genes wed inherited.

Since I began researching my book several years ago, attitudes towards the importance of breathing have altered radically. Covid-19 has turned us into a planet of breath-obsessed people. We spend our days covering our mouths and noses with masks, our nights anxious that we might be feeling a cough coming on or some tightness in our chests. As hard as it might be to consider right now, theres a silver lining in all this. How we breathe may help with health and longevity and paying attention to it is long overdue. Several doctors told me recently that respiratory health has been directly correlated to Covid survival rates and they are now prescribing breathing practices to better defend our bodies against this virus as well as help us better overcome it once we start showing symptoms.

A video posted by Dr Sarfaraz Munshi, who is on the frontlines of the pandemic at Queens Hospital in London, shows Munshi taking abdominal breaths followed by a short breath-hold, then repeating it five times and ending with a cough. This technique, he suggests, will help purge gunk from the lungs and make for easier breathing. Although there is no scientific evidence to suggest this technique helps coronavirus patients, it is recommended by the director of nursing at the hospital.

What Id like to make clear is that breathing, like any therapy or medication, cant do everything. Breathing fast, slow, or not at all, cant make embolisms go away. No breathing can heal stage IV cancer. These severe problems require urgent medical attention. But, like all eastern medicines, breathing techniques are best suited to serve as preventative maintenance, a way to retain balance in the body so that milder problems dont blossom into more serious health issues. Should we lose that balance from time to time, breathing can often bring it back. Add to this, researchers still have much to learn about this endlessly expansive field and there should be more in-depth scientific research into the area.

For now, most of us see breathing as a passive action, something that we just do: breathe, live; stop breathing, die. But breathing is not binary. Its not just that we do it that is so important how we breathe matters, too. I call this awareness and practice of healthy breathing a lost art, because its not new at all. Most of the techniques Ive been exploring are ancient. They were created, documented, forgotten and then discovered again in another culture at another time, then forgotten again. This went on for centuries.

One thing that every pulmonary researcher Ive talked to over the past few years has agreed on is that we tend to overbreathe. Whats considered normal today is anywhere between a dozen and 20 breaths a minute, with an average intake of about 0.5 litres or more of air per breath. For those on the high end of respiratory rates, thats about twice at much as it used to be. Breathing too much can raise blood pressure, overwork the heart and lull our nervous systems into a state of stress. For the body to function as peak efficiency we need to breathe as closely in-line with our metabolic needs as possible. For the majority of us that means breathing less. But thats harder than it sounds. Weve become conditioned to breathe too much, just as weve been conditioned to eat too much. With some effort and training, however, breathing less can become an unconscious habit.

Through my years of travels and travails in respiratory research, there is one lesson, one equation, that I believe is at the root of so much health, happiness and longevity. Im a bit embarrassed to say it has taken me a decade to figure this out and I realise how insignificant it may seem. But lest we forget, nature is simple but subtle. For me, the perfect breath is this: inhale for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. Thats 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 litres of air. You can practise this perfect breathing for a few minutes, or a few hours. When we breathe like this, breathing practitioners suggest that circulation in the brain and body will increase while the burden on the heart decreases. All the while the diaphragm that umbrella-shaped muscle in our chests will drop lower and rise higher, allowing more air to enter the lungs and assisting in pushing blood throughout the body. For this reason, the diaphragm is sometimes referred to as the second heart, because it not only beats to its own rhythm but also affects the rate and strength of the heartbeat.

Breathing techniques in the form of classes, videos, books and apps are already an industry. But be aware that the stripped-down approach is as good as any. It requires no batteries, wifi, headgear or smartphones. It costs nothing, takes little time and effort, and you can do it wherever you are, whenever you need. Its a function our distant ancestors have practised since they crawled out of the sludge 2.5bn years ago, a technique our own species has been perfecting with only our lips, noses and lungs for hundreds of thousands of years.

Most days, I treat it like a stretch, something I do after a long time sitting or stressing, to bring myself back to normal. By the law of averages, you will take 670m breaths over your lifetime. Maybe youve already taken half of those. Maybe youre on breath 669,000,000. Maybe youd like to take a few million more.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (Penguin Life, 16.99) is published on 30 July. Buy it for 14.78 from guardianbookshop.com

Follow this link:
How one hour of slow breathing changed my life - The Guardian

Driving to the Interior: On Susan Barba’s geode – Los Angeles Review of Books – lareviewofbooks

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

JULY 24, 2020

IN GEODE, SUSAN BARBAS conceit is geological time, and it proves a timely guide. With a pandemic challenging our ability to predict the future, to act with care for strangers bodies, and to prioritize nature, her poems offer immensity / with speed bumps and a macro-view through a micro-lens. Her beguilingly exact poems chisel open interior spaces often unseen in everyday life. As in geodes, much of the richness of our perceptions and yearnings remains hidden, mute until it finds an Emersonian sayer. It takes a highly skilled poet to reveal us to ourselves; geode signals the arrival of one whose angle and anvil of vision is acute and necessary.

Barbas earlier book, Fair Sun (2017), includes her grandfathers testimony from his survival of the Armenian Genocide. While that collection explored historys felt presence, geode provides readers with a compass for the psychological terrain of the current moment and for the ecological and social forces that have catalyzed a health crisis. She situates lifecycles generational and geological, personal and planetary within Earths [b]lue-green grid of constant revolution, prompting us to reconsider the terms of our habitation. Like Elizabeth Bishop, she presents demands for a different world in a book that driv[es] to the interior, albeit of our own country and private lives.

Here we are ticking away, / all of us clocks, Barba acknowledges in The Minutes, but she posits the geode as a rival timepiece, independent of human reference. Shorn from limestone or shale, geodes often fit inside the palm, their plain exteriors disguising crystalline cores. A geode also records the context of its making in the way that a poem scores somatic experience in the sedimentary layers of language. [I]n words and rocks / the order is the meaning, she notes, cuing us to the specificity of her syntax and her poems layering.

Precision and subtle intelligence reward her reader. The poem Practice, for instance, offers a slender homily on how to root, in the earth, rage that comes from witnessing human folly.

Your anger is a scrim,clouding your vision.

You see, you hear,and then you testify, you judge.

Write the necessary elegies,the songs of temporary

fury. Human seasons areas leaves, not oaks.

See what foresthas arisen from the rot.

Allow yourselfto be as generous.

Oak, whose girthexceeds my reach

forever I amat your feet,looking up.

The poem switches from second to first person as stern self-advice becomes an ode to the oak. Dwarfing us in size and longevity, species of oak tree can live more than 500 years. This largeness (and largesse) in the natural world provides an example to the narrator. Bidding herself to write the necessary elegies, she tempers anger with metaphor human lives as leaves on long-lived trees, making seasonal departures. We, ourselves, wont be here long.

Depicting how sense perceptions rapidly inform ways we testify and judge, the poem counsels two responses: artistic resistance and the consolation of our relative inconsequence. As the poem shifts, it changes posture. It begins with the speaker looking out at the world of human squabble and concludes by looking up, praising a tree whose width surpasses her grasp.

Barbas poems reliably render the problematics of time, systems of care, and human responsibility on a comprehensive scale, venturing in unexpected directions. The early poem Exhibit 2 considers the psychology of habitation. What does it mean to dwell? What kind of living happens in the living room? What does our typical mode of shelter its prevalence of walls and doors invite or inhibit? She poses an answer in 10 compressed lines.

The centrifugal force of a room:four walls, a ceiling.Nothing can get inbut what you admit.Part dark harbor,part isolation chamber.A man whod lived out of doorssaid what hed missed mostwas not a roof, not a lock,but a doorknob.

In a single stanza, which means room in Italian, the walls and ceiling appear to flee from the center. The dweller, meanwhile, exerts agency in choosing what to admit, perhaps in both senses allowing entry or confessing. Privacy, fetishized in American culture and most often celebrated in its violation, seemingly protects us from vulnerability: what we do not wish to admit, whether guest or secret. In its spare exactness, the poem underscores the tension between isolation chamber and dark harbor, or loneliness versus chosen solitude. Thus the concluding meditation from a man who has lived not outdoors but, more concretely, out of doors suggests that the doorknob signifies having a choice in how we negotiate self and other, how we demarcate interiority in physical space.

Poems in geode also explore the crystalline webs between parent and child, lover and beloved, self and commodity: dyads with socially reinforced centripetal pull. Barba tracks individuation within these relationships and a primal desire for self-possession. As a daughter ventures into ocean surf, her dark head of hair bobs, visibly, as if she were performing a captioned ballet: ballon after ballon / this is my life! The childs postural repudiation of parental care is recast as a secular blessing in the poem Retrospective, Agnes Martin, which addresses the expressionist painter known for her years of disciplined solitude in the New Mexican desert. That poem concludes: if I could give you one thing / it would be untitled space. Autonomy is the essential assertion of children and artists, alike.

Similarly, the speaker in Wide Margin Love Poem bids for a Rilke-esque notion of love as the protection (rather than the collapse) of identity in a narrow column that threads the middle of the page.

Let melet yoube asbeforeor asafterme.

Wise about the claims individuals make on each other, even in love, the poet also contests the demands of commerce. In Blank Placard Dance, a poem about a protest dance performed in 1967 by Anna Halprin, the speaker urges her addressee to retain your stony / surface, stony structure. / Defend the palimpsest / that is your face. Expressivity, or the ability of the face to compose an array of changing affects, is what anonymizing data collection, targeted marketing, Botox, and stealth technology seeks to minimize or eliminate.

While geode features keenly cut lyrics, economic to the syllable, that elucidate murky interiors of what remains of private life, Barba also showcases her sophistication in other modes. In the epic poem River, she extends her concern for the tenets of personhood to the Colorado River, reinforcing her primary argument that we privilege human life and extractive capitalism over the earths health at our peril. The 12-page poem recounts the legal case The Colorado River Ecosystem v. The State of Colorado, which would have granted the river legal standing of personhood and rights akin to other ecosystems such as the Ganges River in India. The poem maps the rivers magnitude, extending 14 million acre-feet from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, supplying arterial lifeblood to nearly 40 million human beings, four million acres of cropland, and countless creatures. An epic catalog of the watersheds species includes the humpback chub and peregrine falcon, the bonytail and black bear, a list she punctuates with the poignant refrain, stay with me now.

Naming these dependent species underscores that the river is a person on whom an ecosystem, a nation of life, depends. Yet the case was dismissed in 2017 by the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, leading Barba to ask one of the books searing questions:

Is it by virtue of this immense life-giving laborthat the river is not a rights-holderbut a natural object,meant for profit,like slaves like womenan order apartlike the roe and the deer?

Misuse of the Colorado River is situated as part of a broader pathology of patriarchal capitalism, which refuses to acknowledge its instrumentalized objects as subjects. This section of the poem concludes with a riveting quotation from a 1968 casebook in property law: [A]fter all, land, like woman, was meant to be possessed.

The legal suit for the Colorado River epitomizes claims we might wish to make within our own lives against the exploitation of our labor, privacy, or attention. In the poem Dispersal, the narrator recounts making a long commute where she feels the light slip / the more she strove. Grappling with global news, her neighbors razed forest, and needy children in the backseat, she composes a petition:

re. space she wantednothing morethan a marginundisturbed

re. time she wantednever to accept it

the trees succumbingto storms with proper names

the grass succumbingto polypropylene

[]

she and I and youand they and he

seeds

seekingmore than a lifein the wind.

Susan Barba dramatizes ordinary life, riven with obligation, and a yearning for time, space, and an identity untethered to others claims. Her aesthetic marries the elliptical startle of Lorine Niedecker and Robert Creeley to the documentary impulse of Muriel Rukeyser and Charles Reznikoff, advocating for a comity with the earth and with our fragmented selves that is both visionary and diagnostic. We cannot have permanence or limitless abundance. But geode asserts that we might still claim purpose in our time on this spherical spinning rock.

Heather TreselersParturition(2020) won Irelands Munster Literature Centresinternational chapbook prize. Her poems appear inThe Cincinnati Review,Harvard Review,Alaska Quarterly Review,Southern Humanities Review, andThe Iowa Review,among other journals.

See the article here:
Driving to the Interior: On Susan Barba's geode - Los Angeles Review of Books - lareviewofbooks

Research Roundup: Progress on COVID-19 Vaccines and More – BioSpace

Posted on July 24, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Every week there are numerous scientific studies published. Heres a look at some of the more interesting ones.

A Big Week for COVID-19 Vaccine Trials

Three of the most advanced COVID-19 vaccines published data from early and mid-range clinical trials this week. CanSino Biologics, along with Chinas military research unit, reported early data on its Phase II trial for its COVID-19 vaccine, Ad5-nCOV. The results in 508 patients showed antibody and T-cell immune responses. There were no reported serious side effects. The data was published in the journal The Lancet.

With one dose, CanSinos human adenovirus vector-based vaccine elicited receptor-binding and neutralizing antibodies in 508 patients peaking after 28 days, wrote Philipp Rosenbaum, senior infectious diseases analyst at GlobalData. However, in the 52% of study participants that had a high pre-existing immunity to the viral vector, both types of antibodies were only at half the level than in the group with low-pre-existing immunity. A second dose of the vaccine might solve this issue, but on the other hand reduce the number of people who can be vaccinated.

The CanSino vaccine uses a modified common cold virus as a vector to deliver the genetic material. This is a method also being utilized by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which also published their results in The Lancet.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine stimulated a T-cell response within 14 days and an antibody response within 28 days.

Lead author Andrew Pollard, University of Oxford, UK, said, The new vaccine is a chimpanzee adenovirus viral vector (ChAdOx1) vaccine that expresses the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. It uses a common cold virus (adenovirus) that infects chimpanzees, which has been weakened so that it cant cause any disease in humans, and is genetically modified to code for the spike protein of the human SARS-CoV-2 virus. This means that when the adenovirus enters vaccinated peoples cells it also delivers the spike protein genetic code. This causes these peoples cells to produce the spike protein, and helps teach the immune system to recognize the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Last week, Moderna and researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and clinical trial centers published the data in The New England Journal of Medicine from its Phase I trial of mRNA-1273, its mRNA vaccine.

The interim analysis was of a two-dose vaccination schedule given 28 days apart at three different dose levels, 25, 100 and 250 micrograms in 45 healthy adults ranging in age from 18 to 55 years. The data published was on results through Day 57.

These Phase I data demonstrate that vaccination with mRNA-1273 elicits a robust immune response across all dose levels and clearly support the choice of 100 microgram in a prime and boost regimen as the optimal dose for the Phase III study, said Tal Zaks, Modernas chief medical officer. We look forward to beginning our Phase III study of mRNA-1273 this month to demonstrate our vaccines ability to significantly reduce the risk of COVID-19 disease.

The companys Phase II trial of the study, with two cohorts, healthy adults ages 18-55 years and older adults ages 55 years and above, are fully enrolled. That study is a placebo-controlled, dose-confirmation study focusing on patients receiving either a placebo, a 50-microgram or 100-microgram dose.

Pfizer and BioNTech announced preliminary data on July 1 from trials of their vaccines, with similar results.

Naor Bar-Zeev and William Moss, with the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote an accompanying editorial in The Lancet discussing both the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca results, also published in the journal, and the CanSino study.

These trial reports are hugely anticipated. The results of both studies augur well for Phase III trials, where the vaccines must be tested on much larger populations of participants to assess their efficacy and safety. Overall, they wrote, the results of both trials are broadly similar and promising, notwithstanding differences in the vector, in the geographical locations of the populations studies, and the neutralization assays used.

They noted that the importance of the studies looking at associations of age and sex with adverse events and immunogenicity by the Chinese group and longevity of response by the British groups, particularly given the differential burden of severe outcomes in older adults, and the emerging science around differential sex-specific vaccine effects. These COVID-19 vaccine trials are small so inferential caution is warranted, but the explorations are laudable. Ethnic diversity in both these trials was very limited.

They also point out that the safety results seen in the two trials are reassuring. But when things are urgent, we must proceed cautiously. The success of COVID-19 vaccines hinges on community trust in vaccine sciences, which requires comprehensive and transparent evaluation of risk and honest communication of potential harms.

Where are the Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S.?

Researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other investigators evaluated 10 locations across the U.S. for antibodies to COVID-19 from March 23 to May 12, 2020. By testing a cross section of 16,025 residual specimens, they estimated the proportion of people with detectible antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in 1.0% in the San Francisco Bay area to 6.9% in New York City. They found that there were six to 24 times more infections per site than reported COVID-19 cases. However, most people at those locations likely did not have detectable antibodies to the virus. The collection sites were San Francisco Bay area; Connecticut; south Florida; Louisiana; Minneapolis-St. Paul-St. Cloud metro area in Minnesota; Missouri; New York City metro area; Philadelphia metro area; Utah; and western Washington State. The authors concluded, The estimated number of infections was much greater than the number of reported cases in all sites. The findings may reflect the number of persons who had mild or no illness or who did not seek medical care or undergo testing but who still may have contributed to ongoing virus transmission in the population.

Proteins that Protect Synapses Discovered, Could Help Alzheimers and Schizophrenia

Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio discovered a new class of proteins that protect synapses from being destroyed. This has implications for Alzheimers disease and schizophrenia. In mouse models of Alzheimers, they found that by removing complement proteins from the brain protected it from neurodegeneration. Complement is an immune system pathway that calls for macrophages to eat excess synapses during development. They identified proteins that inhibit this function.

University of Utah Researchers ID HIVs Dynamic Structure

Investigators with the University of Utah found that the lattice, a major structural part of the HIV virus, is dynamic. It is made of Gag and GagPol proteins and was thought to be completely static. But their new electron microscopy approach, that didnt involve freezing the viral samples, showed that the lattice was dynamic, moving, which may have implications for new approaches to therapeutics.

Oxytocin May Be Used to Treat Cognitive Diseases like Alzheimers

Researchers at Tokyo University of Science found evidence that oxytocin, a hormone dubbed the love hormone because of its ability to induce feelings of love and well-being, can reverse some of the damage caused by amyloid plaques in an animal model of Alzheimers disease. Alzheimers is associated with two abnormal proteins, amyloid plaques and tau tangles. The research was published in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications.

This is the first study in the world that has shown that oxytocin can reverse ABeta-induced impairments in the mouse hippocampus, said Akiyoshi Saitoh from the Tokyo University of Science, who led the research. At present, there are no sufficiently satisfactory drugs to treat dementia, and new therapies with novel mechanisms of action are desired. Our study puts forth the interesting possibility that oxytocin could be a novel therapeutic modality for the treatment of memory loss associated with cognitive disorders such as Alzheimers disease. We expect that our findings will open up a new pathway to the creation of new drugs for the treatment of dementia caused by Alzheimers disease.

Saitoh and his team perfused slices of the mouse hippocampus with Abeta to confirm that Abeta caused the signaling abilities of neurons in the slices to decline. Then, they perfused with oxytocin, noting that the signaling abilities increased. Further experiments concluded that oxytocin bound with oxytocin receptors in the membranes of brain cells.

View original post here:
Research Roundup: Progress on COVID-19 Vaccines and More - BioSpace

A Staggering 21TB of Source Code Were Just Buried in The Arctic For an Unknown Future – ScienceAlert

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

If doomsday comes, know this: precautions have been taken. On an isolated Arctic archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault aka Norway's 'Doomsday Vault' holds over 1 million seed samples in a fortress-like bunker designed to be the most invulnerable seed bank in the world.

Svalbard protects more than just seeds, though. On the same remote mountain, an abandoned coal mine now exists as another vital safe-house: the Arctic World Archive, preserving the world's data of today for an uncertain tomorrow. And the facility just received a contribution that's truly mind-boggling in scope.

GitHub, often billed as the world's largest host of open source code, has successfully transported all of its active public code repositories (as of February this year) to the Arctic World Archive, as part of the company's ongoing efforts to establish the GitHub Arctic Code Vault.

(GitHub)

"Our mission is to preserve open source software for future generations by storing your code in an archive built to last a thousand years," Julia Metcalf, GitHub's director of strategic programs, explains on the company's blog.

The project, first announced last year, already saw one shipment to Svalbard in late 2019, with a deposit of 6,000 of the platform's most significant repositories of open source code.

The new shipment, painstakingly managed during the shutdowns and border closures of the coronavirus pandemic, goes even further, preserving a massive haul amounting to 21 terabytes of data, written onto 186 reels of a digital archival film called piqlFilm.

This purpose-built media designed to last for 500 years, with simulations suggesting it should last twice as long is now stored 250 metres deep, in a steel-walled container inside a sealed chamber in the Arctic World Archive.

The film, composed of silver halides on polyester, looks like a miniaturised print of QR codes, except every frame squeezes in some 8.8 million microscopic pixels, and each reel runs for almost 1 kilometre (about 3,500 ft), such is the gargantuan size of the data being stored.

(GitHub/YouTube)

"It can withstand extreme electromagnetic exposure and has undergone extensive longevity and accessibility testing," the piql company claims.

It's hoped that this extremely long-life media in conjunction with the Archive's natural isolation and engineered security will give the world's open source software the best chance of seeing a distant future where it may one day be needed by upcoming generations.

"It is easy to envision a future in which today's software is seen as a quaint and long-forgotten irrelevancy, until an unexpected need for it arises," the GitHub Archive website explains.

"Like any backup, the GitHub Archive Program is also intended for currently unforeseeable futures as well."

In those unforeseeable futures, it's hard to know exactly what future humans will make of the archive's coded contents, or how they might be able to access and use them.

For that reason, the vault will also contain a separate, human-readable reel, called the Tech Tree, explaining the technical history and cultural context of the archive's contents.

The Tech Tree won't just throw future humans into the world of 21st century open source code, but serve as a primer for what these programs are, and what kind of technology they run on.

"It will also include works which explain the many layers of technical foundations that make software possible: microprocessors, networking, electronics, semiconductors, and even pre-industrial technologies," Metcalf explains.

"This will allow the archive's inheritors to better understand today's world and its technologies, and may even help them recreate computers to use the archived software."

See the original post here:
A Staggering 21TB of Source Code Were Just Buried in The Arctic For an Unknown Future - ScienceAlert

Has The Cellular Aging Master Circuit Been Discovered? – Anti Aging News

Posted on July 23, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Research indicates that the average American lives to be around 75-80ish years old. The question is if you had the opportunity to live longer would you take it? This is a rather loaded question thick with philosophical and societal considerations among others.

Humans have long searched for the possibility to extend life and some to even become immortal. But when it comes down to it many consider this to just be a flight of fanciful dreams. But according to research this is not necessarily true. In recent years research is indicating that we can take steps to extend our healthspan and in turn longevity. Now University of California researchers have revealed a groundbreaking discovery regarding the intricacies of cellular aging, and in light of their findings the team suggests that the notion of dramatically extended human lifespan is not so far fetched after all.

Each individuals lifespan and personal rate of aging is determined by the aging of their individual cells. This study set out to investigate different types of cells at different ages, at different speeds based on different causes and stimuli using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae which provided a suitable model to track the aging mechanisms of various cell types.

The study published in Science found that two cells made of the exact same genetic material and residing in the same bodily location can age in vastly different ways and cellular/molecular trajectories. Using a variety of complex techniques it was discovered that about half of the cells age due to a slow decline in the stability of their nucleus, while the other cells appear to age primarily due to dysfunctional mitochondria.

At the beginning of their existence cells appear to start aging early on in their nucleolar or mitochondrial path of aging, and they continue to follow the same aging process until they die off. The team claims to have been able to find the master circuit that is in charge of controlling these aging processes and paths among the cells.

To understand how cells make these decisions, we identified the molecular processes underlying each aging route and the connections among them, revealing a molecular circuit that controls cell aging, analogous to electric circuits that control home appliances, says senior study author Nan Hao, an associate professor in the Section of Molecular Biology, Division of Biological Sciences.

Their discovery allowed for the construction of a new model of the aging landscape, and the revelation that the team might be able to conceivably manipulate and optimize the aging process. As such using a series of computer simulations the team reprogrammed the master molecular circuit via DNA modifications which resulted in the creation of a novel aging route that offered a much longer lifespan. The team plans to continue testing their model on more complex cells before moving onto human cell testing.

Our study raises the possibility of rationally designing gene or chemical-based therapies to reprogram how human cells age, with a goal of effectively delaying human aging and extending human healthspan, Hao says.

Much of the work featured in this paper benefits from a strong interdisciplinary team that was assembled, says Biological Sciences Professor of Molecular Biology Lorraine Pillus, a study co-author. One great aspect of the team is that we not only do the modeling but we then do the experimentation to determine whether the model is correct or not. These iterative processes are critical for the work that we are doing.

Excerpt from:
Has The Cellular Aging Master Circuit Been Discovered? - Anti Aging News

How one company is using machine learning to remove bias from the hiring process – WRAL Tech Wire

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Editors note: Stuart Nisbet is chief data scientist at Cadient Talent, a talent acquisition firm based in Raleigh.

RALEIGH At Cadient Talent, its a question that we wrestle with on a daily basis: How do we eliminate bias from the hiring process?

The only way to address a problem or bias is to acknowledge it head on, under the scrutiny of scientific examination. Through the application of machine learning, we are able to learn where we have erred in the past, allowing us to make less biased hiring decisions moving forward. When we uncover unconscious bias, or even conscious bias, and educate ourselves to do better based on unbiased machine learning we are able to take the first step toward correcting an identified problem.

Bias is defined as a prejudgment or a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way that is considered to be unfair. Think of bias as three sets of facts: The first is a set of objective facts that are universally accepted. The second is a set of facts that confirms beliefs, in line with what an individual believes to be true. Where bias enters the picture is in the intersection between the objective facts and the facts that confirm personal beliefs.

By selectively choosing the facts that confirm particular beliefs and focusing on the things that confirm those beliefs, bias enters. If we look at hiring from that perspective, and if our goal is to remove bias from the hiring process, then we need to remove the personal choice of which data points are included in the process. All data points that contribute to a positive choice (hire the applicant) or negative choice (decline the applicant) are included in the process and choosing the data points and their weights is done objectively through statistics, not subjectively through human choice.

How can computer algorithms help us do this? Our goal is to be able to augment the intelligence of humans, in particular by using the experiences and prior judgment in past hiring decisions, with an emphasis on those that resulted in good hiring decisions. Good hiring can be measured in a number of ways, that dont implement inappropriate bias, such as the longevity of employees. If a new hire does not remain on the job very long, then perhaps the recruiting effort was not done well, and, in hindsight, you would not have chosen that applicant. But, if you hire someone who is productive and stays for a long time, that person would be considered a good hire.

We want to remove bias when it is unintentional or has no bearing on whether an employee is going to be able to perform the job in a satisfactory manner. So, if a hiring managers entire responsibility is to apply their knowledge and experience to determine the best fit, why do we use machine learning to eliminate bias? Because, artificial intelligence only removes the bias towards non-work-related candidate attributes and augments decisions based on relevant work traits, where there is appropriate bias.

Our goal is then to make the hiring process as transparent as possible and consider all of the variables that are used in a hiring decision. Thats extremely complicated, if not impossible, if you have nothing but a human-based approach because the decision-making of a hiring manager is far more complex and less understood than those of a machine learning algorithm. So, we want to focus on the strength of simplicity in a machine learning algorithm; meaning we only want to look at variables, columns, and pieces of data in the algorithm that are pertinent to the hiring process and do not include any data points that are not relevant to performance.

Stuart Nisbet

An assessment result, for example, whether cognitive or personality-based, may be a very valid data point to consider if the traits being assessed are pertinent to the job. Work history and demonstrated achievement in similar roles may be very important to consider. The opposite is very clear, too. Gender, ethnicity, and age should have no legitimate bearing on someones job performance. This next point is critical. A hiring manager cannot meet an applicant in an interview and credibly say that they dont recognize the gender, ethnicity, or general age category of the person sitting across from them. No matter our intentions, this is incredibly hard to do. Conversely, it is the easiest task for an algorithm to perform.

If the algorithm is not provided gender, ethnicity, or age, there is no chance for those variables to be brought into the hiring decision. This involves bringing in the data that is germane, having a computer look at what hiring decisions have been made in the past that have resulted in high performing long-term employees, and then strengthening future decisions based on the past performance of good hiring management practices. This will ultimately remove the bias in hiring.

One of the things that deserves consideration is the idea of perpetuating past practices that could be biased. If all we are doing is hiring like we have hired in the past and there have been prejudicial or biased hiring practices, that could promote institutional bias. Through time, we have trained computers to do exactly what a biased manager would have done in the past. If the only data that is used (trained) for hiring is the same data that is selected by biases of the past, then it is difficult to train on data that is not biased. For example, if we identify gender as a bias in the hiring process, and we take the gender variable out of the algorithm, gender would not be considered. When we flag previous bias, we are able to minimize future bias.

We should unabashedly look at whether we are able to identify and learn from hiring practices that may have had bias in the past. This is one of the greatest strengths of applying very simple machine learning algorithms in the area of hourly hiring.

An aspect of the hiring process that opens up a lot of opportunities in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning is implementing diversity.

Artificial intelligence can really differentiate itself here. Machine learning can make the very best hiring decisions based on the data that its given; if you have diversity goals and want hiring practices to encourage a diverse work population, it is very simple to choose the best candidates from whichever populations are important to corporate goals. This can be done transparently and simply. It doesnt prioritize one person over another. It allows the hiring of the very best candidates from each population that youre interested in representing the company.

Upon scrutiny and scientific examination, machine learning can be a very valuable tool for augmenting the hiring decisions managers make every day and help to understand when bias has entered into our decisions and yielded far less than our collective best.

Here is the original post:
How one company is using machine learning to remove bias from the hiring process - WRAL Tech Wire

Massive Demand in Precision Medicine Software Market | Scope and Price Analysis of Top Manufacturers Profiles by 2027| Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen,…

Posted on July 18, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

HealthCare Intelligence Markets unravels its new study titled Precision Medicine Software Market. Effective exploratory techniques such as qualitative and quantitative analysis have been used to discover accurate data. For an effective business outlook, it studies North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Japan, and India by considering different aspects such as type, size, as well as applications. SWOT and Porters five analysis have been used to analyse cost, prices, revenue, and end-users. Various aspects of businesses such as primary application areas, financial overview, and requirement of the industries have been mentioned to give a brief to the readers. This research study further offers mergers, acquisitions and product portfolio of the businesses.

Ask for sample copy of this [emailprotected]https://www.healthcareintelligencemarkets.com/request_sample.php?id=32273

Profiling Key players: Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen, Roper Technologies, Fabric Genomics, Foundation Medicine, Sophia Genetics, PierianDx, Human Longevity, Translational Software, Gene42, Inc, Lifeomic Health

Global Precision Medicine Software Market Report Illuminates:

Ask for a discount on this [emailprotected]https://www.healthcareintelligencemarkets.com/ask_for_discount.php?id=32273

Table of Contents:

For more information ask our experts @https://www.healthcareintelligencemarkets.com/enquiry_before_buying.php?id=32273

If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as per your requirements.

About Us:

HealthCare Intelligence Markets Reports provides market intelligence & consulting services to a global clientele spread over 145 countries. Being a B2B firm, we help businesses to meet the challenges of an ever-evolving market with unbridled confidence. We craft customized and syndicated market research reports that help market players to build game-changing strategies. Besides, we also provide upcoming trends & future market prospects in our reports pertaining to Drug development, Clinical & healthcare IT industries. Our intelligence enables our clients to make decisions with which in turn proves a game-changer for them. We constantly strive to serve our clients better by directly allowing them sessions with our research analysts so the report is at par with their expectations.

Contact Us:Address: 90, State Office Center,90, State Street Suite 700,Albany, NY 12207Email:[emailprotected]Website:www.healthcareintelligencemarkets.comPhone:+1 (888) 616-2766

Originally posted here:
Massive Demand in Precision Medicine Software Market | Scope and Price Analysis of Top Manufacturers Profiles by 2027| Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen,...

Will COVID-19 Change the Way Every Generation Lives? UK Expert Offers Insight – UKNow

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 17, 2020) From the Great Depression to the Civil Rights Movement each generation has been shaped by the national and international events that take place during their formative years.

Will the same be said for the COVID-19 pandemic?

Anthony Bardo, an assistant professor with a dual appointment inHealthy Society and Populations and the Department of Sociologyin the UK College of Arts and Sciences, believes its important to consider how perspectives will change. As a medical sociologist and health demographer, his research is driven by the desire to understand what contributes to quality of life across societies.

In line with the age-old adage without your health you have nothing, scholars and politicians have recently turned to measures of health and longevity to gauge quality of life, he said. Yet, as my research has consistently shown health is only one, and not even the most important, component of quality of life.

While its difficult to predict the future, Bardos expertise and insight can help society prepare for what the world will look like months or even years from now.

And perhaps its worth considering how each generation might live their lives differently.

UKNow: The COVID-19 pandemic is changing many aspects of our lives. Can we expect some of those changes to be our new normal not just for the next few months, but years?

Bardo: Indeed, many aspects of our lives have been touched if not substantially altered.Our day-to-day behaviors, activities and routines are now shaped by mandates and policies aimed at slowing the pandemic.

Minimal Changes

Bardo: Actions tied to economic activities (e.g., shopping, work, leisure) will likely return to normal once government restrictions are lifted and community concern has diminished. However, our routines will likely continue to be shaped by a now cognizant concern for public health (e.g., hand washing, covering coughs/sneezes, isolating while sick, etc.). At first, these behaviors will likely be driven at the individual level. We may continue to see readily available sanitizing agents in public spaces, and organizations may even start to enforce sick leave policies. These circumstances beg the question, why were these fundamental functions not already ingrained in our society?

Drastic Changes

Bardo: Its apparent that improvements in quality of life are no longer closely tied to technological development. Refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers were certainly game changers as they allotted folks additional time for activities that were more enjoyable and/or meaningful. Yet, since the rise of the personal computer, national-level well-being has remained relatively constant.

What do we do with this new technology? We use it to purchase more things, spend more time working and less time in the physical presence of others. In a sense, weve been on a path toward social isolation for several decades by surrounding ourselves with more stuff and fewer people (at least in a physical sense).

Technological development has long been deemed the solution to enhance quality of life. It was widely thought that such advancements would ultimately lead to the good life. Now we may actually have begun recognizing that human interactions and meaningful pursuits are what we crave. Although e-commerce is at an all-time high, were not the least bit happier when packages magically appear on our doorsteps. Many are now working from home, but also yearning for some dry humor at the water cooler. Students had been begging for more online learning opportunities, but now they want nothing more than to come to campus.

Takeaway

Bardo: Im not, nor is anyone else, sure what the future holds, but if we dont take the time now to reflect on our experience, well simply continue to fall subject to the same economic forces that have made life vanillaat best.

UKNow: As unemployment persists, many are concerned about their financial future. How will COVID-19 impact career trajectories?

Bardo: A useful exercise to consider is to draw on what we now know about the long-term implications of the Great Recession and how they differ by age group.

Mid-Career (late Boomers and early Gen-Xers)

Bardo: The current pandemic has ravaged the labor market. Unlike during the Great Recession, mid-career folks may find themselves facing greater challenges compared to those on the verge of retirement. For example, the current mid-career cohort should be in their prime earning years, but they now find themselves hit with a double whammy. The Great Recession stalled their upward mobility early on. Contemporaneously, retirement and old age were reinvented in such a way to extend traditional working age (e.g., 60 is the new 50). Moreover, these shifting age norms at the latter end of the life course have major implications for younger people as well. For example, young folks increasingly find themselves in a precarious state, as adult positions and the privileges they come with continue to dwindle highlighted by a massive increase in mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

Relatedly, the current mid-career cohort uniquely lacks the retirement savings that previous cohorts had. This is partially due to the above noted hamper in upward mobility, but also because this mid-career cohort are grappling with increased costs of education for both themselves and their children. Many are also simultaneously supporting their adult children and aging parents, and sometimes even their grandchildren. Macroeconomic circumstances cannot, or will not, provide the same opportunities to achieve the American dream as they once did. The current pandemic only makes the future seem bleaker.

Late Boomers and early Gen-Xers have a close relationship with adversity, and they have received relatively little support along the way compared to previous cohorts. They faced numerous socioeconomic woes at critical life stages. They were children during the Oil Crisis and may have gone without during their impressionable years. They were launching their careers during the dot-com bubble, and they are much more likely to have had made career changes compared to earlier cohorts. They were finally starting to find their way during the Great Recession, and they only recently recovered to pre-Great Recession status. Given the above circumstances, its not surprising that this age group is driving the Deaths of Despair an unprecedented reversal in life expectancy because of increased mortality among whites in mid-life due to suicide and drug and alcohol abuse.

Takeaway

Bardo: In sum, the American dream certainly takes hard work and dedication, but opportunity is a prerequisite. Will opportunities abound post-pandemic? Maybe so. The more important question is, do we want the same opportunities that have provided less than an optimal quality of life?

UKNow: As teens become young adults, how might this pandemic change/shape their views on the areas below:

Higher Education

Bardo: A common strategy among young adults in response to the Great Recession was to shelter in higher education. For many this meant pursuing graduate degrees in lieu of entering the labor market after undergrad. The idea was that the recession would end, things would go back to normal and their lapse in employment would have been used to make themselves more marketable. Whether this strategy was effective remains an open question. What is clear is that the transition to adulthood has remained precarious at best, with even fewer road signs and landmarks than ever before. Moreover, the uncertainty surrounding higher education during this pandemic only adds to this dilemma what to do?

Whether to pursue higher education may seem like a relatively straightforward decision, but this decision traditionally comes at an age when timing is particularly crucial. If young adults arent in higher education making themselves more marketable (we can no longer afford to learn for the sake of learning, or maybe never have), then what will they do? Maybe they will take up low paying jobs that are now deemed essential. Or as suggested by our political leaders, they may even find something new. Regardless of what path young people choose, were likely to see another baby bust.

Family Formation

Bardo: Child rearing is a key component of family formation, and its timing in the life course has major implications for ones remaining years. Thirteen years ago, America was only coming to terms with decades-long shifts in traditional family values driven by an increase in female labor participation, two earner households and divorce rates. This is evidenced by attitude and subsequent policy shifts surrounding same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights.

While current circumstances reflect traditional telltale signs for a baby boom (what else is there to do than Netflix and chill?), we are going to have a back-to-back baby bust (opposite of baby boom). This not only has major implications for the future trajectories of young adults themselves, but also the many institutions that were designed to serve them. Moreover, who is going to pay the taxes to support our rapidly aging population?

Social Justice

Bardo: The unique socialization of Gen-Z (the children of Gen-X) has led to increased versatility in anticipation for a bumpy road. While certainly versatile, Gen-Z is often stereotyped as being overly individualistic or even narcissistic. On the one hand, the individualistic stereotype rings true. For example, there is no cultural glue that binds this cohort together nor any that ties them to their adjacent Millennials. This is largely due to technological development and the related rise in user-generated content. On the other hand, the narcissistic stereotype couldnt be further from the truth. For example, this cohort is leading the way in terms of equality and social justice evidenced by the current protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Few cohorts aside from the Silent Generation have faced such levels of uncertainty during their formative years. Likely due to their formative experiences of social deprivation, Gen-Z and the Silent Generation share many characteristics. For example, the Silent Generation is often credited withforming the leadership of the Civil Rights movement. This may also be due to the circumstances of their respective parents, and the unique primary socialization they provided. The Greatest Generation enjoyed the Roaring Twenties and Gen-X soaked up the materialism of the 1980s and early '90s as young adults, and both historical periods were closely followed by turbulent times (i.e., Great Depression and Great Recession). Furthermore, both generations are characterized by a relatively high prevalence of mental health issues. Mental health was not well understood when the Silent Generation was young, but their relatively high levels of cognitive impairment likely reflects the long-term consequences of their exposure to social stressors. How might the COVID-19 pandemic impact both the immediate and long-term mental health of Gen-Z? Might the current movements come to parallel those of the Civil Rights era?

Takeaway

Bardo: Many of the issues that we face today can be linked back to the disappearing middle-class, as the social institutions that were designed to improve our lives (e.g., science, education, and medicine) have fallen under attack and those that were intended to keep us in our place (e.g., religion, marriage, and criminal justice) have simultaneously eroded. The idea of a new normal has been underway for a long time (arguably 50 years), and the current pandemic has only just thrown a wrench in these plans (e.g., What normal were we trying to achieve? Were we actually driving the train?)

UKNow: Protests across the United States are shining a spotlight on social injustice. Does COVID-19 play a role in widening social inequalities?

Bardo: We are certainly a nation divided, and the stressors of the current pandemic have heightened our awareness of our seemingly polar views. Maybe if we all took this time to come together around the common terms of our plight for the good life, we would finally recognize that we have more similarities than differences and that the only way to get there is if we stand together well, at least six feet apart for now.

UK is home to some of the worlds most renowned thought leaders, and theystandreadyto answer pressing questions. From epidemiology and virology to constitutional law and political science faculty and staff expertise spans a broad range of newsworthy topics. Through acomprehensive database,theUK Office of Public Relations and Strategic Communicationsis working to quickly connect thoseexpertsto statewide, regional, national and international media outlets.

See the rest here:
Will COVID-19 Change the Way Every Generation Lives? UK Expert Offers Insight - UKNow

The app that shows how long youre likely to live but will it make us healthier? – iNews

Posted on September 9, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

Would knowing the date of your death influence your actions? It did for Tiberius Caesar. Convinced by the court astrologer Thrasyllus that he had many years of life ahead of him, the paranoid old emperor chose to postpone the murder of his heir Caligula.

But by believing Thrasylluss prediction and letting his guard down, Tiberius inadvertently gave Caligula enough time to poison him first. The rest, as they say, is history which Thrasyllus had altered by deliberately overestimating his employers life expectancy.

Richard Faragher, University of Brighton

While many of us are unlikely to find ourselves in Caesars position, knowing how many years we have left may influence many aspects of our life including when to retire, whether to take a long-awaited vacation, and even whether to opt for certain medical treatments.

MyLongevity, a newly developed app from researchers at the University of East Anglia, now allows each of us to be our own life expectancy astrologer. But how much trust should we place in these predictions?

Simply put, life expectancy is how long, on average, members of any given population can expect to life. This is different from lifespan, which is the maximum length of time any member of the species can survive.

Although lifespan has changed very little if at all global life expectancy has soared by more than 40 years since the beginning of the 20th century. This was achieved through a combination of scientific discoveries and public health measures that drove down infant mortality. In the UK, life expectancy at birth is now over 80 years.

Life expectancy depends a lot on where you grow up or live. So the more a disparate population can be broken down into sub-populations who have traits in common but which are still large enough to be statistically significant the more accurate predictions become. Doing this might involve subdividing the population by sex (on average females live longer than males) or smoking status (for obvious reasons) or both.

The team of researchers used a sophisticated version of this approach when developing their app, informed by its previous research. This allows its app to factor in the life expectancy effects of controlled and uncontrolled high blood pressure, the presence of related illnesses such as cardiovascular disease or rheumatoid arthritis, ongoing treatment with statins, and serious risk factors, such as high cholesterol.

Developing the app has involved dealing with some problems along the way in estimating potential health benefits for the overall population based on those seen in clinical trials. This is because discrepancies exist between trial subjects and populations for a number of reasons but usually they are cases of what is known as tight segmentation working against you.

For example, a clinical trial of the effects of orange juice in sailors with scurvy will show profound benefits because they are a tight segment with vitamin C deficiency. But anyone expecting to see the same beneficial effects on health from prescribing orange juice to everyone taking a boat trip today is going to be deeply disappointed.

How seriously you should treat the predictions from an app of this type is basically a function of how accurately it reflects the sub-population into which you best fit. I compared my life expectancy prediction from My Longevity with calculators provided by the UK Office for National Statistics and those of two insurance companies. The predictions varied from 84-90 years. As Im 54, this may not have been a completely fair test of MyLongevity because the data the team has used makes the app most accurate for the over 60s.

The major reason life expectancy calculators spit out such different figures is because there are a wide range of factors influencing the results. Being married increases your life expectancy compared to being single, as does being happy. In addition to smoking, levels of fruit and vegetable intake influence life expectancy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, levels of alcohol consumption and exercise make a profound difference to life expectancy. These are concrete lifestyle changes people can make which can add years to their lives.

The East Anglia research team hopes that access to its calculator will encourage users to adopt healthier lifestyles. Although there is some evidence that framing behaviours in terms of their effects on life expectancy is an effective way of encouraging people to embrace healthier lifestyles, superficial discussions of health and longevity often assume that everyone will seek to maximise life expectancy if only they are fed enough of the facts about it.

However, human motivation is emotional and intuitive at its core and is shaped by what a person most values in life. Propositions that accord with a persons values are typically supported. Those that dont are either ignored or rejected.

Another common mistake made by those promoting behaviour change is to assume their own dominant values are shared by the people they want to adopt the behaviour in question. This approach will only convince people who already think and feel like them. But the more developers of such apps recognise that users will only adopt certain behaviours according to their values and beliefs, the more useful these apps will be.

Richard Faragher, Professor of Biogerontology, University of Brighton

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

Excerpt from:
The app that shows how long youre likely to live but will it make us healthier? - iNews

Post Covid-19 Impact on Precision Medicine Software Market Capacity, Production, Revenue and Forecast 2020 to 2026 Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen, Roper…

Posted on November 2, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

It is our aim to provide our readers with report for Precision Medicine Software Market, which examines the industry during the period 2020 2026. One goal is to present deeper insight into this line of business in this document. The first part of the report focuses on providing the industry definition for the product or service under focus in the Precision Medicine Software Market report. Next, the document will study the factors responsible for hindering and enhancing growth in the industry. After covering various areas of interest in the industry, the report aims to provide how the Precision Medicine Software Market will grow during the forecast period.

The major vendors covered: Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen, Roper Technologies, Fabric Genomics, Foundation Medicine, Sophia Genetics, PierianDx, Human Longevity, Translational Software, Gene42, Inc, Lifeomic Health, and more

Get a Free Sample Copy @ https://www.reportsandmarkets.com/sample-request/global-precision-medicine-software-market-2019-by-company-regions-type-and-application-forecast-to-2024?utm_source=aerospace-journal&utm_medium=39

The Precision Medicine Software Market report between the years 2020 2026 will highlight the current value of the industry. At the same time, there is also an estimate of how much this line of business will be worth at the end of the forecast period. As it is our goal to maintain high levels of accuracy at all times, we will take a look at the CAGR of the Precision Medicine Software Market. We make sure that all the information available in this report has excellent levels of readability. One way we achieve this target is by Precision Medicine Software Market segmentation. Going through the report for 2020 2026 will bring our readers up-to-date regarding this industry.

While examining the information from this document, one thing becomes clear, the elements which contribute to increase in demand for the product or service. At the same time, there will be a focus on what drives the popularity of these types of products or services. This report is for those who want to learn about Precision Medicine Software Market, along with its forecast for 2020 2026. Information regarding market revenue, competitive partners, and key players will also be available.

Segmentation

As discussed earlier, there is segmentation in the Precision Medicine Software Market report, to improve the accuracy and make it easier to collect data. The categories which are the dividing factors in the industry are distribution channels, application, and product or service type. With this level of segmentation, it becomes easier to analyze and understand the Precision Medicine Software Market. At the same time, there is emphasis on which type of consumers become the customers in this industry. When it comes to distribution channels, the Precision Medicine Software Market report looks at the different techniques of circulation of the product or service.

Regional Overview

In this part of the Precision Medicine Software Market report, we will be taking a look at the geographical areas and the role they play in contributing to the growth of this line of business. The areas of interest in this document are as follows Middle East and Africa, South and North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. From the Precision Medicine Software Market report, it becomes clear which region is the largest contributor.

Latest Industry News

From this Precision Medicine Software Market report, the reader will also get to learn about the latest developments in the industry. The reason is that these products or services have the potential to disrupt this line of business. If there is information about company acquisitions or mergers, this information will also be available in this portion of the Precision Medicine Software Market report.

If you have any special requirements about this Precision Medicine Software Market report, please let us know and we can provide custom report.

Inquire More About This Report @ https://www.reportsandmarkets.com/enquiry/global-precision-medicine-software-market-2019-by-company-regions-type-and-application-forecast-to-2024?utm_source=aerospace-journal&utm_medium=39

About Us

ReportsAndMarkets.com allocates the globally available market research and many company reports from reputed market research companies that are a pioneer in their respective domains. We are completely an autonomous group and serve our clients by offering the trustworthy available research stuff, as we know this is an essential aspect of Market Research.

Sanjay Jain

Manager Partner Relations & International Marketing

http://www.reportsandmarkets.com

Ph: +1-352-353-0818 (US)

View post:
Post Covid-19 Impact on Precision Medicine Software Market Capacity, Production, Revenue and Forecast 2020 to 2026 Syapse, Allscripts, Qiagen, Roper...

Lapetus Solutions working on biometrics-based selfie face analytics for aging – Biometric Update

Posted on August 14, 2020 by Prof Baldwin

AI company Lapetus Solutions has been developing analytical solutions for the insurance market that leverage biometric facial recognition with selfies to treat the face as a biomarker of human aging, writes Longevity Technology.

Professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Karl Ricanek holds a PhD in computer science and has specifically focused on facial analytics. He founded Lapetus Solutions in 2015 together with Jay Olshansky, professor of gerontology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and founder of the field of biodemography.

Ricanek explained in an interview with Longevity Technology that just 10 years ago, insurance companies created life expectancy models based on blood analysis. In a meeting with life insurance companies, Ricanek heard Olshanskys presentation on people who are biologically aging slower and the indicators on the face that present themselves for long-lived individuals.

Its about understanding your origins, your genes, those things that are just innate in you, Ricanek told the publication. So, it was natural that we would look at the components of the face to understand biological age, or what were now calling in our product, our senescing rate. This is the rate at which youre aging, and it can be faster or slower, or normal. So, if you are senescing slower than normal, it basically means that you are likely to live longer than average. If youre senescing faster, then youre likely to live shorter.

Next year, Lapetus plans to release Janus, a facial analysis product that life insurance companies can integrate with their online application process. The company claims a medical selfie is all it takes for the system to accurately detect gender, age and BMI in less than two minutes. Another feature it is working on is susceptibility to chronic diseases.

After working in AI for some 30 years, Ricanek says that Only now are we getting to the point where the artificial intelligence, the hardware, and the ability to scale it up using cloud technology, has presented itself in such a way that we can solve these really challenging and, before now, just intractable problems.

Lapetus focus areas are longevity risk, life expectancy, medical underwriting and wealth management. Future plans include adding sensory analytics and saliva-based genetic testing, while researching other innovation related to aging measurement.

When you blend all of these things together, we can give you a more detailed picture of your life expectancy and your potential for chronic disease, says Ricanek. We havent done the blending part yet but thatll come next year.

With roughly eight or nine million secured, Lapetus has received support from a number of investors including SixThirtyandPlug and Play.

Read the original here:
Lapetus Solutions working on biometrics-based selfie face analytics for aging - Biometric Update

Select Page ::