Washington gives NASA a boost in Recent Budget Deal
Washington gives NASA a boost in recent budget deal Credit:Fox News Fox News: http://foxnews.com/ Please: Like, Share and Subscribe ...Thanks!!! Copyright Di...
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A NASA sun-studying probe celebrates four years in space this week, and the agency has released a stunning new video to mark the occasion.
Theamazing new video of the sun, which NASA released Tuesday, is a greatest-hits set from the space agency's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which is celebrating its fourth year in space. The video showcases some of SDO's most dramatic and beautiful images from the last 12 months.
The nearly four-minute movie includes footage of sunspots,solar flares powerful blasts of light in X-ray and other wavelengths and prominence eruptions, which send loops of solar material out into the sun's atmosphere.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatoryblasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Feb. 11, 2010, on a mission to study solar activity and help scientists understand how variations in that activity affect life here on Earth.
"Scientists study these images to better understand the complex electromagnetic system causing the constant movement on the sun, which can ultimately have an effect closer to Earth, too: Flares and another type of solar explosion called coronal mass ejections can sometimes disrupt technology in space," NASA officials wrote in a description of the video. nasa-sun-observatory-fourth-anniversary-video-sdo
SDO captures high-resolution views of the sun in 10 different wavelengths 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The probe records images of the solar atmosphere in unprecedented detail, researchers say.
Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?
Many of us take the sun for granted, giving it little thought until it scorches our skin or gets in our eyes. But our star is a fascinating and complex object, a gigantic fusion reactor that gives us life. How much do you know about the sun?
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Solar Quiz: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?
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NASA Sun-Watching Spacecraft Celebrates 4th Birthday with Amazing Video
NASA trained several pairs of eyes on Saturn as the planet put on a dancing light show at its poles. While NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting around Earth, was able to observe the northern auroras in ultraviolet wavelengths, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, orbiting around Saturn, got complementary close-up views in infrared, visible-light and ultraviolet wavelengths. Cassini could also see northern and southern parts of Saturn that don't face Earth.
The result is a kind of step-by-step choreography detailing how the auroras move, showing the complexity of these auroras and how scientists can connect an outburst from the sun and its effect on the magnetic environment at Saturn. A new video showing aurora images from Hubble and Cassini is available at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/?id=1277.
"Saturn's auroras can be fickle -- you may see fireworks, you may see nothing," said Jonathan Nichols of the University of Leicester in England, who led the work on the Hubble images. "In 2013, we were treated to a veritable smorgasbord of dancing auroras, from steadily shining rings to super-fast bursts of light shooting across the pole."
The Hubble and Cassini images were focused on April and May of 2013. Images from Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrometer (UVIS), obtained from an unusually close range of about six Saturn radii, provided a look at the changing patterns of faint emissions on scales of a few hundred miles (kilometers) and tied the changes in the auroras to the fluctuating wind of charged particles blowing off the sun and flowing past Saturn.
"This is our best look yet at the rapidly changing patterns of auroral emission," said Wayne Pryor, a Cassini co-investigator at Central Arizona College in Coolidge, Ariz. "Some bright spots come and go from image to image. Other bright features persist and rotate around the pole, but at a rate slower than Saturn's rotation."
The UVIS images, which are also being analyzed by team associate Aikaterini Radioti at the University of Liege, Belgium, also suggest that one way the bright auroral storms may be produced is by the formation of new connections between magnetic field lines. That process causes storms in the magnetic bubble around Earth. The movie also shows one persistent bright patch of the aurora rotating in lockstep with the orbital position of Saturn's moon Mimas. While previous UVIS images had shown an intermittent auroral bright spot magnetically linked to the moon Enceladus, the new movie suggests another Saturn moon can influence the light show as well.
The new data also give scientists clues to a long-standing mystery about the atmospheres of giant outer planets.
"Scientists have wondered why the high atmospheres of Saturn and other gas giants are heated far beyond what might normally be expected by their distance from the sun," said Sarah Badman, a Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team associate at Lancaster University, England. "By looking at these long sequences of images taken by different instruments, we can discover where the aurora heats the atmosphere as the particles dive into it and how long the cooking occurs."
The visible-light data have helped scientists figure out the colors of Saturn's auroras. While the curtain-like auroras we see at Earth are green at the bottom and red at the top, Cassini's imaging cameras have shown us similar curtain-like auroras at Saturn that are red at the bottom and purple at the top, said Ulyana Dyudina, an imaging team associate at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
The color difference occurs because Earth's auroras are dominated by excited nitrogen and oxygen molecules, and Saturn's auroras are dominated by excited hydrogen molecules.
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This week NASA and the Centre national dtudes spatiales (the French space agency, CNES) signed an agreement to work towards a future Mars lander set to launch in 2016.
The mission is known as the Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) mission. The goal of the project is to
The InSight mission is currently scheduled to launch in March 2016. After arriving at Mars half a year later a lander will be deployed to the red planets surface. Once there, the lander will use a tool known as the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to study the interior of Mars.
The SEIS instrument is capable of measuring tectonic activity and meteorite impacts on Mars. Researchers hope the data gathered by the lander will help inform research into how rocky planets first form.
This new agreement strengthens the partnership between NASA and CNES in planetary science research, and builds on more than 20 years of cooperation with CNES on Mars exploration, said Charles Bolden, NASA administrator. The research generated by this collaborative mission will give our agencies more information about the early formation of Mars, which will help us understand more about how Earth evolved.
NASA is the latest agency to sign on for the SEIS project. The German Aerospace Center, the UK Space Agency, the Swiss Space Office, and the ESA all have a hand in the project, and the InSight mission includes researchers from all over Europe, North America, and Japan.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The results of a workshop to find the best ways to find, track and deflect asteroids headed for Earth were released by NASA on Friday (Feb. 7).
NASA's Asteroid Initiative, started in 2013, includes a mission tocapture a small near-Earth asteroidand drag it into a stable orbit around the moon, and a challenge to devise the best ideas for detecting and defending against potentially dangerous asteroids.
The agency put out a request for information to refine the objectives of the Asteroid Initiative, to generate other mission concepts and increase participation in the mission and planetary defense. [NASA's Asteroid-Capture Mission in Pictures]
NASA received an enthusiastic response, including from the general public. The agency evaluated the ideas it received and chose 96 of them to explore further at a two-part workshop at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 30 and Nov. 20 to 22, 2013.
"We are already acting on the ideas submitted through the [request] process," NASA said in a statement.
For example, the agency reactivated the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft, now known asNEOWISE, in Sept. 2013, to look for near-Earth asteroids that could be targets for the Asteroid Redirect Mission.
The workshop report also recommended holding more forums to get citizens involved in the Asteroid Initiative and create incentives to reach milestones in the asteroid mission and grand challenge.
Asteroid Basics: A Space Rock Quiz
Asteroids are fascinating for lots of reasons. They contain a variety of valuable resources and slam into our planet on a regular basis, occasionally snuffing out most of Earth's lifeforms. How much do you know about space rocks?
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Artist's concept of the InSight lander. NASA
NASAs Mars rovers, such as Curiosity and Opportunity, are looking for evidence of ancient water and exploring the history of the Martian environment that indicates a past that was once suitable for life. NASA will go beyond the surface on Mars in the new InSight mission.
The InSight missions main objective will be to explore the deep interior of Mars to gain new insights to how it formed. According to the CNES, the mission will study the structure of Mars crust mantle and core, measuring size, thickness and density. The Mars lander will be equipped with the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to measure tectonic activity and the effects of meteorite impacts. The SEIS instrument will also analyze the interior structure and composition of Mars.
The research generated by this collaborative mission will give our agencies more information about the early formation of Mars, which will help us understand more about how Earth evolved, said NASA chief administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.
According to NASA, the InSight mission will launch in March 2016, landing on Mars six months after launch. The landers arrival will bring the total number of Mars missions to seven, with one future mission slated for 2020. NASA currently has three spacecraft orbiting the planet, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), and is participating in the European Space Agencys Mars Express mission as well as two rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity. NASA is planning to launch a new rover in 2020 with the goal of a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s.
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NASA And French Space Agency Team Up For 2016 Mars Lander Mission
What the Participants Said
The forum's participants described nanomanufacturing as a future megatrend that will potentially match or surpass the digital revolution's effect on society and the economy. They anticipated further scientific breakthroughs that will fuel new engineering developments; continued movement into the manufacturing sector; and more intense international competition.
Although limited data on international investments made comparisons difficult, participants viewed the U.S. as likely leading in nanotechnology research and development (R&D) today. At the same time, they identified several challenges to U.S. competitiveness in nanomanufacturing, such as inadequate U.S. participation and leadership in international standard setting; the lack of a national vision for a U.S. nanomanufacturing capability; some competitor nations' aggressive actions and potential investments; and funding or investment gaps in the United States (illustrated in the figure, below), which may hamper U.S. innovators' attempts to transition nanotechnology from R&D to full-scale manufacturing.
Funding/Investment Gap in the Manufacturing-Innovation Process
Participants outlined three approaches that might be viewed as alternative ways to address these challenges--or used together: (1) strengthen U.S. innovation by updating current innovation-related policies and programs, (2) promote U.S. innovation in manufacturing through public-private partnerships, and (3) design a strategy for attaining a holistic vision for U.S. nanomanufacturing. Participants who represented a range of perspectives on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) issues also noted that significant research is needed to understand the risks associated with nanomaterials. As such, multiple participants advocated a collaborative effort, in which nanotechnology stakeholders create an EHS framework, including developing standards for measurement and nomenclature, to help assess and address these risks.
Finally, participants advocated both maintaining R&D support and considering ways to address the challenges outlined above. Justification of further steps might be based on their potential for improving (1) international data on nanotechnology investments, (2) international standard setting for nanomanufacturing and U.S. participation, (3) U.S. ability to maintain or enhance competitiveness, and (4) U.S. and international efforts to address EHS issues.
Nanotechnology has been defined as the control or restructuring of matter at the atomic and molecular levels in the size range of about 1-100 nanometers (nm); 100 nm is about 1/1000th the width of a hair.
The U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), begun in 2001 and focusing primarily on R&D, represents a cumulative investment of almost $20 billion, including the request for fiscal year 2014. As research continues and other nations increasingly invest in R&D, nanotechnology is moving from the laboratory to commercial markets, mass manufacturing, and the global marketplace--a trend with potential future import that some compare to history's introduction of technologies with major economic and societal impact, such as plastics and even electricity. Today, burgeoning markets, innovation systems, and nanomanufacturing activities are increasingly competitive in a global context--and the potential EHS effects of nanomanufacturing remain largely unknown.
At the July 2013 forum, participants from industry, government, and academia discussed the future of nanomanufacturing; investments in nanotechnology R&D and challenges to U.S. competitiveness; ways to enhance U.S. competitiveness; and EHS concerns. Participants reviewed a summary of forum discussions, and two experts (who did not attend the forum) independently reviewed a draft of this report. Their comments were incorporated in this report as appropriate.
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U.S. GAO - Nanomanufacturing: Emergence and Implications ...
SANTA FE -- A proposal that would have allowed New Mexico voters to decide whether to legalize and regulate marijuana was blocked Tuesday in a Senate committee, though the measure's sponsor vowed to bring it back again next year.
"We'll just keep trying it until it happens," Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, told reporters. "I think it's inevitable."
The proposed constitutional amendment, modeled after a new law in Colorado, was stymied on a 5-5 vote in the Senate Rules Committee. The vote likely left the measure deadlocked for the rest of this year's 30-day session, Ortiz y Pino said.
The committee's four GOP members were joined by Democratic Sen. Clemente Sanchez of Grants in voting against the measure.
Opponents of the amendment said they are concerned about the public health effects of legalizing recreational marijuana use and don't believe such a change belongs in the state Constitution.
"I don't believe smoking a bowl is a constitutional right," said Sen. Mark Moores, R-Albuquerque.
New Mexico Sheriff's Association Executive Director Jack LeVick also testified against the proposal, urging senators to wait and see how Colorado and Washington fare with their marijuana legalization laws before moving forward.
If approved by lawmakers and voters statewide, the New Mexico legislation -- Senate Joint Resolution 10 -- would have called on lawmakers to return to the issue in 2015 to determine how marijuana might be sold, taxed and regulated in the state.
That could lead the state down a path like Colorado's. New Mexico's northern neighbor began allowing retail sales of recreational marijuana last month, with a 25 percent tax earmarked to help fund education programs.
Backers of the amendment say legalizing recreational pot use would create a similar revenue source for New Mexico, while allowing the state to redeploy resources currently used to enforce marijuana laws.
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New York, NY (PRWEB) February 12, 2014
Kalorama Information has published Molecular Diagnostics Six Month Update, the latest look at this fast-growing IVD test segment.
Molecular diagnostics is becoming a dominant platform in clinical medicine and represents one of the fastest growing segments of the diagnostics market. In light of the amount of activity in test development and regulatory and reimbursement challenges in 2013, Kalorama Information presents this updated review of molecular diagnostics with an emphasis on the last six months of 2013: July December. This report highlights trends and developments that portent the evolution of molecular tests and technologies. The ensemble of consumer demand, technological advances and market forces create a dynamic, energetic and fast-moving environment for new tests and companies.
Though focused on the developments of the last six months, coverage is substantial. As part of its coverage, this report provides, current market size and forecasts for Molecular Diagnostic Segments, including:
The report provides breakout of key market segments for molecular diagnostic markets in world regions, including developed nations and emerging nations. In addition the following important trend information is also provided:
Market analysis in this report covers world markets for in vitro diagnostics, however the reader will find a bias toward the developed areas of the globe -- North America and Western Europe. However public health and infectious disease are a growing global problem and where possible the report covers IVD products related to the globalization of diseases. The information presented in this report is derived primarily from company reports and other publicly available information published by government, and medical organizations.
The Molecular Diagnostics Six Month Update is available at http://www.kaloramainformation.com/Molecular-Diagnostics-Month-7969379/.
About Kalorama Information Kalorama Information, a division of MarketResearch.com, supplies the latest in independent medical market research in diagnostics, biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and healthcare; as well as a full range of custom research services. We routinely assist the media with healthcare topics. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and our blog.
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Kalorama Information Publishes Molecular Diagnostics Market Update
Frisco, Texas (PRWEB) February 12, 2014
ION Solutions, a diversified physician services organization whose membership represents more than half of the private practice oncologists in the United States, today announced the selection of Foundation Medicine as its preferred partner for comprehensive cancer genomic profiling services. Foundation Medicines clinical products, FoundationOneTM for solid tumors and FoundationOneTM Heme for hematologic malignancies, sarcomas and pediatric cancers, each provide a fully informative genomic profile that complement traditional cancer treatment decision tools and often expands treatment options by matching each patient with targeted therapies that are relevant to the molecular changes in their tumor. This relationship will advance the organizations shared goals of providing comprehensive cancer diagnostic tools to community oncologists and their patients.
Foundation Medicine is the leader in providing comprehensive genomic profiling to the broad oncology community, said Barry Fortner, President, ION Solutions. We look forward to our preferred partnership to provide these important tools to community oncologists to help inform treatment decisions and enable precision medicine for their patients.
ION Solutions is known for bringing cutting edge technologies to its vast network of community oncologists, and we are very pleased to have been selected as their preferred comprehensive genomic profiling services partner, commented Kevin Krenitsky, M.D., chief commercial officer and senior vice president, international strategy, Foundation Medicine. Our mission at Foundation Medicine is to provide broad access to clinical grade and comprehensive genomic sequencing to oncologists at both academic medical centers and community practices, and we believe this partnership will help further these efforts.
Foundation Medicine has developed the first commercially available targeted sequencing assays using comprehensive, clinical next-generation sequencing to assess routine cancer specimens for all genes that are currently known to be somatically altered and unambiguous drivers of oncogenesis in solid tumors and hematologic malignancies, as well as many sarcomas and pediatric cancers. Genomic profile results are reported to the oncologist and matched with targeted therapies and clinical trials that may be relevant to each individual patient based on the most recent scientific and medical research. For more information or to order Foundation One and FoundationOne Heme, please visit http://www.FoundationOne.com.
About ION Solutions and AmerisourceBergen ION Solutions, a part of AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group, is the largest physician service organization and GPO specializing in the support of community oncology. ION provides technologies, resources and expertise to community-based oncologists to help improve clinical and operational management. Additional information can be found at http://www.iononline.com. AmerisourceBergen is one of the largest global pharmaceutical sourcing and distribution services companies, helping both healthcare providers and pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturers improve patient access to products and enhance patient care. With services ranging from drug distribution and niche premium logistics to reimbursement and pharmaceutical consulting services, AmerisourceBergen delivers innovative programs and solutions across the pharmaceutical supply channel. With over $100 billion in annualized revenue, AmerisourceBergen is headquartered in Valley Forge, PA, and employs approximately 13,000 people. AmerisourceBergen is ranked #32 on the Fortune 500 list. For more information, go to http://www.amerisourcebergen.com.
About Foundation Medicine Foundation Medicine (NASDAQ: FMI) is a molecular information company dedicated to a transformation in cancer care in which treatment is informed by a deep understanding of the genomic changes that contribute to each patients unique cancer. The companys clinical assays, FoundationOneTM for solid tumors and FoundationOneTM Heme for hematologic malignancies, sarcomas and pediatric cancers, each provide a fully informative genomic profile to identify a patients individual molecular alterations and match them with relevant targeted therapies and clinical trials. Foundation Medicines molecular information platform aims to improve day-to-day care for patients by serving the needs of clinicians, academic researchers and drug developers to help advance the science of molecular medicine in cancer. For more information, please visit http://www.FoundationMedicine.com or follow Foundation Medicine on Twitter (@FoundationATCG).
Foundation Medicine is a registered trademark, and FoundationOneTM is a trademark, of Foundation Medicine, Inc.
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Funding Basic Science to Revolutionize Medicine, 2013 FASEB Stand Up for Science Winner
Tell Congress that science funding is important: http://capwiz.com/faseb/issues/alert/?alertid=63078836 "Funding Basic Science to Revolutionize Medicine" was...
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Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag - Part 23 - Diving For Medicine (Xbox One Walkthrough)
"LIKE" for more Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag (Xbox One) Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag - Part 1 - Heroes Aren #39;t Born (Xbox One Walkthrough) http://youtu.be/Z...
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Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag - Part 23 - Diving For Medicine (Xbox One Walkthrough) - Video
The Teaching of The 13 Moons Medicine Wheel With Shii Tuii a kuna Guenta
More info http://conta.cc/1bnn44W The Teaching of The 13 Moons Medicine Wheel With Shii Tuii a kuna Guenta and Grandfather H #39;sa Guenta Hokon atuk A 6-week Au...
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The Teaching of The 13 Moons Medicine Wheel With Shii Tuii a kuna Guenta - Video
Adam McDaniel, D.O. Internal Medicine
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Newswise PHILADELPHIAPenn Medicine today announced a collaboration with software and analytics company Teqqa, LLC that could revolutionize the way antibiotics are tracked and prescribed in clinical settings. The two will work together to develop a new software platform and mobile app that aims to encourage appropriate antibiotic use by providing real-time data to clinicians, and minimize the risk of dangerous pathogens developing resistance to life-saving antibiotics.
The resistance of bacteria to commonly-used antibiotics has been increasing at an alarming rate, and resistance patterns vary internationally, nationally, regionally, and locally. These differences matter a drug that is effective against a life-threatening bacterial infection at one hospital may be much less effective at another, and appropriate stewardship of antibiotic drugs is essential to slowing the growing resistance.
Understanding these patterns, particularly within a given hospital, is essential to determine the best methods to track, prevent, and treat these infections. Without a clear, real-time and accurate understanding of drug sensitivity and resistance patterns within individual hospitals and the community, however, physicians typically choose antibiotics empirically, potentially contributing to resistance and poor patient outcomes.
The appropriate use of antibiotics to treat infections depends on knowing what antibiotics kill which bacteria, said Keith Hamilton, MD, associate director of Healthcare Epidemiology, Infection Prevention and Control and director of Antimicrobial Stewardship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Predicting and understanding the trends and patterns of resistance allows clinicians to choose appropriate medications to treat a patients infection, and provides the health system real, actionable data to make broad recommendations for use of these life-saving drugs.
As part of the collaboration, Penn Medicine and Teqqa will jointly develop the software to allow for real-time microbiology data analysis, as well as a mobile app giving the userprimarily prescribing physiciansimmediate access to this critical information, allowing them to choose the best antibiotics for their patients. This will replace the current practice of providing data to clinicians every 9 to 12 months, where data is nearly obsolete as soon as it is made available.
The project with Teqqa builds upon Penns successful Antimicrobial Stewardship Program, which since its inception in 1993 has been shown to improve appropriateness of antibiotic use and cure rates, decrease failure rates, and reduce healthcare-related costs with its multifaceted approach.
This innovative software has the potential to improve patient outcomes and resistance patterns in hospitals across the country by allowing practitioners to understand the behavior of infections locally, regionally and most importantly, within their healthcare facilities, said Patrick J. Brennan, MD, chief medical officer for the University of Pennsylvania Health System. This is an important step in more effectively designing interventions to control and treat these infections.
We are thrilled to be working together with Penn Medicine, a leader in antibiotic stewardship and innovation in health care delivery, to develop this novel solution to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, said Dan Peterson, MD, CEO of Teqqa. "Penn Medicine's equity position in Teqqa demonstrates both their strong commitment to improving patient outcomes and novel approaches to care delivery, and their desire to benefit from Teqqa's expertise in data analytics and software development to achieve those goals. Its a great opportunity to work with Penn to develop applications for Penn Medicine and for use more broadly with other health systems."
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Penn Medicine, Teqqa LLC Developing New Software and App to Track Antibiotic Resistance
Source: Institute for Systems Biology
Leroy Hood, president of the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle, Washington, likes to talk about what he calls P4 medicine: health care that is predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory. Medicine today is a string of infrequent interventions prompted mainly by symptoms of illness. Hood argues instead for continuous management of health, making full use of whole-genome sequencing and biomarkers to correct disease before it gains a foothold.
In March, Hood will embark on the first big test of his ideas: a nine-month pilot study, dubbed the Hundred Person Wellness Project, in which 100 healthy individuals will be intensively monitored (see An examined life), offered regular feedback and counselled on lifestyle changes such as shifts in their dietary or sleep habits. The effects of these behavioural changes on their health will, in turn, be tracked using a battery of diagnostic tests.
The study violates many rules of trial design: it dispenses with blinding and randomization, and will not even have a control group. But Hood is confident in its power to disrupt the conventional practice of medicine. We hope to develop a whole series of stories about how actionable opportunities have changed the wellness of individuals, or have made them aware of how they can avoid disease, he says.
If the pilot study works as hoped, it will expand in several phases until it encompasses 100,000 subjects monitored over 25 years. The ISB is paying for the first hundred people through private donations and has budgeted around US$10,000 per person. Hood expects those costs to drop drastically in a larger study, thanks to economies of scale and rapidly evolving diagnostic technologies. But he acknowledges the challenge of securing the hundreds of millions of dollars that a generation-long trial would require.
Even in its pilot phase, the project is unusually thorough. The ISB will sequence the whole genome of each participant at the outset. And in later phases, Hood says, the study team will also examine epigenetics: methylation and other modifications to DNA that can reflect environmental exposures. But that is just the tip of the data-collection iceberg.
Institute for Systems Biology
Leroy Hood: We hope to develop a whole series of stories about how actionable opportunities have changed the wellness of individuals.
Participants will be asked to wear digital devices that will continuously record their physical activity, heart rate and sleep patterns; subjects will periodically upload those data to the institutes systems. Every three months, researchers will gather samples of participants blood, urine, saliva and stool. They will measure five biochemicals in saliva and urine, and sequence the stool samples to track the ecology of major microbial species in the gut. Blood-chemistry screens will extend well beyond the usual tests for cholesterol and glucose to include 20less-commonly monitored variables, such as C-reactive protein which signals inflammation at high levels. Hoods teams will also monitor about 100 organ-specific proteins that, he says, are sensitive markers for transitions from health to disease in mouse and cell models.
The point of the study and of P4 medicine in general is to detect those transitions and respond to them before symptoms appear. To that end, participants (mostly residents of the Seattle area, invited through social media) will have full access to their personal cloud of data points. Some will have enough scientific training to dive into the literature and interpret their data themselves. But Hood expects most to rely on ISB-provided wellness coaches and their own physicians to interpret the results and recommend medical treatment or changes in diet or behaviour.
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Newswise PHILADELPHIA -- Penn Medicine researchers have developed a better way to assess and diagnose psychosis in young children. By growth charting cognitive development alongside the presentation of psychotic symptoms, they have demonstrated that the most significant lags in cognitive development correlate with the most severe cases of psychosis. Their findings are published online this month in JAMA Psychiatry.
We know that disorders such as schizophrenia come with a functional decline as well as a concurrent cognitive decline, says Ruben Gur, PhD, director of the Brain Behavior Laboratory and professor of Neuropsychology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Most physicians have a clinical basis from which to assess psychosis, but less idea as to how to best assess and measure a decline in cognitive function. To make this easier and to aid in early diagnosis and treatment, we created growth charts of cognitive development to integrate brain behavior into the diagnostic process.
Psychosis is a severe mental illness, characterized by hallucinations, delusions, social withdrawal and a loss of contact with reality. Genetics and environment, including emotional or physical trauma, can both play a role in its development.
The Penn researchers assessed the brain behavior of a cohort of about 10,000 patients between the ages of eight and 21 at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia from November 2009 to November 2011, including 2,321 who reported psychotic symptoms. Of those, 1,423 reported significant psychotic symptoms, 898 had limited psychotic symptoms, and 1,963 were typically developing children with no psychotic, mental or any medical disorders.
Researchers administered a structured psychiatric evaluation, looking for symptoms of psychosis, anxiety, mood, attention-deficit, disruptive behavior and eating disorders; for the younger children, independent interviews with their caregivers were also conducted. The team also administered 12 computerized neurocognitive tests to evaluate each childs brain development across five domains: executive function, testing abstraction and mental flexibility, attention and working memory; episodic memory, testing knowledge of words, faces and shapes; complex cognition, evaluating verbal and nonverbal reasoning and spatial processing; social cognition, looking at emotion identification, intensity differentiation and age estimation; and sensorimotor speed, to understand the workings of their motor and sensorimotor skills.
The results were analyzed to predict chronological age for each child.
They showed that those with the most extreme psychotic symptoms had a lower chronological than predicted age, compared with the typically-developing group and the group with other psychiatric symptoms. They also had a greater developmental lag than the psychosis-limited group, with the lags most pronounced for complex cognition and social cognition and smallest for sensorimotor speed.
Broken down further, we found that boys on the psychosis spectrum showed an early decline in memory, complex and social understanding, compared with typically developing children, while girls showed minimal lag in memory across all ages groups, with a lag in complex cognition appearing later in development, explains Gur. This seems to follow the differences in how disorders such as schizophrenia manifest themselves across the sexes.
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Gary Oldman says #39;RoboCop #39; shows the true meaning of liberty
Gary Oldman says the timing of the #39;RoboCop #39; reboot is perfect.
By: HitFix
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Gary Oldman says 'RoboCop' shows the true meaning of liberty - Video
Sisters found slain in East Liberty house
Pittsburgh police say they are treating the deaths of two women whose bodies were found inside a home on Chislett Street as a murder case.
By: WTAE-TV Pittsburgh
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The Inside Poop on Dog Shows | Liberty Treehouse
WHETHER YOU #39;RE CRAZY ABOUT CANINES... A CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE OF MAN #39;S BEST FRIEND... OR SOMEONE WHO SPRINTS ACROSS THE STREET AT THE SIGHT OF A PUPPY... CHANC...
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