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America at Large: The evolution of LeBron James still hampered by blind spots – The Irish Times

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

The evolution of LeBron James. In 2007, Ira Newbie, a Cleveland Cavaliers bench player, penned an open letter about the genocide in Darfur to the Chinese government, demanding Sudans main trading partner use its influence to try to stop the slaughter. A noble if quixotic attempt to shine light on a dark corner of the world.

When Newbie brought his missive around the locker-room for his team-mates to sign, James refused, citing the lack of information available about the issue. After he subsequently launched a signature shoe called LeBron V China edition, many assumed his reluctance to call out Beijing was commercially-motivated.

The impression that James was going to be an apolitical shill cut from the Tiger Woods mould took root the previous year after the New York Knicks Stephon Marbury launched a revolutionary brand of basketball shoes called Starbury. Retailing for just $14.99, about a tenth of what a kid would pay for something with the Adidas or Nike logo on it, Marburys valiant and ultimately doomed attempt to disrupt the lucrative sneaker industry was designed to make quality footwear available to the less well-off. Asked if he would ever wear them, James, then midway through a seven-year $90 million deal with Nike, was utterly dismissive, No, I dont think so. Me being with Nike, we hold our standards high.

A pair of incidents that made a mockery of the twenty-something Jamess assertion that he wanted to be the next Muhammad Ali. Studiously avoiding divisive issues made him sound a lot more like the next Michael Jordan, the man to whom he had been most often compared. As he assiduously built a career to match his heros on the court, failing to use his profile off it for the greater good often brought to mind Jordans infamous refusal to back a black Democrat over a white racist candidate for the US Senate because, Republicans buy sneakers too!

While basketball aficionados now argue long into the night about which one of them can lay claim to being the best player ever, Americas version of the Messi v Maradona debate, the argument about greater impact has already been won by James.

It took Jordan nearly four decades in the limelight before he suddenly, belatedly discovered a social conscience and almost embarrassingly reckoned it was okay to speak out on social issues. James started to find his voice at 27, specifically in the aftermath of Trayvon Martin being shot dead by an over-zealous neighbourhood watchman in Florida, his crime wearing a hoodie while carrying a packet of skittles.

Its difficult to reconcile the younger, milquetoast version of James with the political tour de force now on the verge of clinching his fourth NBA title with the Los Angeles Lakers. Immediately after defeating the Denver Nuggets in a crucial playoff game last month, the 35-year-old used an on-court television interview to deliver a moving soliloquy about Breonna Taylor. An athlete still in the arena, sweat dripping from his brow and a towel around his neck, using his platform to draw attention to the fact no charges were being brought against the police officers who killed the Louisville woman last March.

That was only one screengrab from the litany of times he has stood up to be counted in recent times. In a career move that Jordan so meticulously avoided, James has become a polarising figure in the culture of a troubled, racially-divided nation, a vocal athlete willing to put his mouth and his millions behind causes from voting reform to calling the president a bum. Comparisons with Ali that once seemed naive, fanciful and just plain wrong now appear almost on point.

In February, 2018, Laura Ingraham, the especially loathsome Fox News channel host, delivered an invective against James, questioning his right to speak on social issues and demanding, instead, that he, Shut up and dribble! He responded to her shrill hectoring in the most 21st century way possible, showcasing the influence he wields far beyond the NBA. Using his own film production company in Hollywood, the man who grew up in abject poverty in Akron, Ohio produced a three-part television documentary series about the history of black athletes and activism, calling it, Shut up and dribble!

This is why hes the poster-child for a generation of media-savvy sportsmen and women who realise their immense wealth and celebrity profile afford them the opportunity to campaign for social justice. Aside from a host of philanthropic missions, including a school for at-risk students and a promise to underwrite college education for thousands of kids, he recently founded More Than a Vote. Designed to get out the vote in the black community, this initiative has already paid off the outstanding debts of former felons in Florida so they can cast ballots on November 3rd.

My goal is to educate not only my peers, but their communities as well to let them know that our voice is being heard, said James. Our vote is being counted.

There remains a troubling blind spot. When the Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey expressed support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong last year, James refused to back him up, arguing, I dont want to get into a feud with Daryl Morey, but I believe he wasnt educated on the situation.

Shades of Ira Newbie and Darfur all over again. The evolution of LeBron James is impressive but still a work in progress.

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America at Large: The evolution of LeBron James still hampered by blind spots - The Irish Times

Turkana Basin Researchers to Probe Climate Change and Evolution in East Africa – Stony Brook News

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

In the summer of 1964, a Yale undergrad named J.G. Mead discovered a beaked whale fossil during an expedition in what is now the Turkana region of northwest Kenya. The 17-million-year-old fossil played an integral role in providing the first date estimate for East Africas puzzling tectonic uplift. Now, 56 years later, the fossil has become the impetus for new research that takes a unique approach to uncovering the course of mammalian evolution in East Africa.

In January 2021, an international research team led by Stony Brook University will launch a project that aims to understand how climate change and tectonics on Miocene ecosystems in this region influenced life and evolution, from the time that whale lived to the present day.

The research is supported by a $2.7 million four-year grant from the National Science Foundations (NSF) Frontier Research in Earth Sciences (FRES) Program. Named the Turkana Miocene Project, the research is multinational, interdisciplinary and involves five core U.S. universities. Led by Stony Brook, the project also includes Rutgers University, Hamilton College, the University of Michigan and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

The international team includes experts in tectonics, sedimentology, geochronology, isotope geochemistry, paleoecology, climate modeling and paleontology, and includes members based at the National Museums of Kenya and University of Helsinki, Finland.

The goal of the research is to better define through fieldwork, laboratory analysis and advanced climate modeling how tectonics and climate interacted to shape the environment that gave rise to the ancestors of humans and our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans that emerged in Africa.

Since the whale fossil was originally found 740 miles inland and at an elevation of approximately 2,000 feet, the question of how it got to that location has mystified scientists for decades. And because it represents a profound change from the Miocene Epoch to Kenyas Turkana Basin today a possible indication of a transformed geological and ecological landscape the Miocene is of particular interest to geologists and paleoclimatologists. Thats because major phases of the geology of the Himalayas occurred during the period, affecting monsoonal patterns in Asia that were interlinked with glacial periods in the northern hemisphere.

A longstanding question at the intersection of Earth and life sciences is: What roles if any do climate and tectonics play in the evolution of life?

The East African Rift is among the best places to study the influences of Earth processes on the evolution of mammals, said Isaiah Nengo, principal investigator, professor of anthropology and associate director of Stony Brook Universitys Turkana Basin Institute. Here, uniquely, the regions geologic and climate histories, including the formation of the rift system that is the cradle of humankind, are preserved in sedimentary rocks. Our collaborative work will tease out how tectonics and climate come together to drive evolution.

By investigating the basins sediments, the researchers will tackle a task that has never been done before. The team hopes the fossils contained will provide new insight into ancient climate and habitats that record the emergence of humans, their primate ancestors and African mammals over the past 25 million years.

Its estimated that the human-chimpanzee common ancestor evolved approximately 7.5 million years ago (mya) and diverged from the common ancestor with the gorilla ancestor about 9.3 mya. Meanwhile, the common ancestor of the great apes and humans is estimated to have diverged from the ancestor of the gibbons and siamangs approximately 19.1 mya. All these key divergence events would have occurred in the time period known as the Miocene (from about 23 mya to 5 mya).

Nengo will collaborate with co-investigators Greg Henkes, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, and Bill Holt, a professor of geophysics, Department of Geosciences, along with the international team. They will explore relationships between tectonics, climate and mammal evolution in the Turkana Basin using integrated field, laboratory and modeling studies. New and existing data will be combined to study the links between rift development, climate change and their respective roles in vegetation and mammal evolution.

The first two years of the initiative will focus on data collection from the field. The third year will involve laboratory analyses. In the fourth year, the team will conduct the analysis and be on site at the Turkana Basin Institute to produce a tectonic model that reconstructs rift evolution in this region of East Africa over the past 25 million years.

That tectonic model will be integrated with climate-vegetation models. Independent geological, geochemical, paleoecological and paleontological data will be used to validate these model outputs to distinguish the influences of tectonics and climate on the evolution of Turkana ecosystems and mammals.

This integrated approach across geoscience subdisciplines is really the future of paleoenvironmental reconstruction, said Henkes. The challenge of separating commingled effects of climate, tectonics and evolution is incredibly complex. We hope to leverage the best of these different approaches to demonstrate that its possible, at least at the scale of a single, very important basin. The urge to understand how our hominid ancestors responded to environmental change is so obviously of the moment. When we are out in the field in Turkana, with such intense heat and aridity, its hard to not contemplate the role climate has already played in the human origins story. This project aims to bring clarity to that evolutionary context.

This is a very exciting time to be working on such an integrated project, added Holt. Computational tools are now advanced enough to model the driving forces that impacted the 4-D evolution of the rift system, while also taking into account the coupling with climate and the resulting erosion and sedimentation. It will be possible to test models that predict the landscape response to tectonic and climate factors, all while considering the keygeological, geochemical, paleoecological and paleontological observations.

NSFs FRES also provides funding to complete extensive fieldwork that will provide training for a cohort of students and postdocs at Stony Brook University, Lamont, Rutgers, Michigan and Hamilton College.

The project also involves Tara Smiley, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, and members of the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences (IDPAS) at Stony Brook.

The co-investigators include the following: Kevin Uno, Lamont associate research professor, Columbia; Craig Feibel, professor of geology and anthropology, Rutgers; Catherine Beck, assistant professor of geosciences, Hamilton College; Chris Poulsen, professor, associate dean for natural sciences, University of Michigan; and IDPAS faculty members Troy Rasbury, associate professor, Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook; Gabrielle Russo, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook; Sidney Hemming, professor and chair, Lamont Earth Observatory, Columbia; Stephen Cox, associate research scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; Ali Bahadori, graduate student, Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook; Mae Saslaw, graduate student, Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook; Sara Mana, assistant professor, geological sciences, Salem State University; Mikael Fortelius, professor of evolutionary paleontology, University of Helsinki; Indr liobait, assistant professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki; Guillaume Dupont-Nivet, professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University; Rahab Kinyanjui, senior research scientist, National Museums of Kenya; Patricia Princehouse, senior research associate, Institute for the Science of Origins, Case Western Reserve University; Ellen Miller, professor of physical anthropology, Wake Forest University; Francis Kirera, assistant professor of anatomy, Mercer University; Nasser Malit, associate professor, biological anthropology, State University of New York at Potsdam); Peter Ungar, distinguished professor, anthropology, University of Arkansas; and Liam Zachary, graduate student, anthropology, University of Arkansas.

Permission for field and laboratory research in Kenya is provided by the Kenya Government with the support of the National Museums of Kenya.

Robert Emproto

Classical Evolutionary Story Overturned: Our Mud-Slurping Chinless Ancestors Had All the Moves – SciTechDaily

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Life restoration of Cephalaspis, a typical osteostracan, swimming over the substrate. Credit: Hugo Salais (Metazoa Studio)

A team of researchers, led by the University of Bristol, has revealed our most ancient ancestors were ecologically diverse, despite lacking jaws and paired fins.

Long before they evolved out of the water, our ancient ancestors were simple fish-like creatures, but without fins or chins, who survived by filtering nutrients from the sediment.

They have long been thought of as the lazy lumps who spent most of their lives resting on or near to the sea floor. The belief was that everything changed with the evolution of jawed vertebrates whose paired fins made them the super-swimmers and active predators, driving their jawless relatives to extinction.

However, a new study published in the journal Current Biology overturns this classical evolutionary story.

Researchers from the University of Bristol used computer simulations to explore how avatars of our extinct ancestors interacted with water currents. These experiments revealed the bizarre spikes and spines that ornamented the heads of these jawless vertebrates were actually hydrodynamic adaptations, passively generating lift from water currents flowing over the body. The varying head shapes of different species allowed them to adapt to different positions, some high, others low, within the water. Our ancient ancestors were already ecologically diverse, long before the evolution of their jawed vertebrate relatives.

Dr. Humberto G. Ferron, a postdoctoral researcher from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol and one of the papers co-authors, said: The evolution of jaws and fins have classically been seen as the key evolutionary inventions that allowed vertebrates to diversify their lifestyles.

In this context, jawless ancestors, characterized by the presence of heavy rigid headshields, were assumed to be cumbersome fish-like creatures, living on the bottom of rivers and seas, with poor maneuverability.

The question of how our ancient ancestors made a living has long been a mystery because there are no animals like them alive today. The osteostracans (their latin name, meaning bony shells) were heavily armored, encased in thick bone from snout to tail. They lacked a rear pair of legs and some had none at all; many possessed bizarre horn-like extensions from the front of their heads.

Ferrn and colleagues tackled this problem using state-of-the-art computational engineering techniques that simulate the behavior of fossil avatars in water currents.

Dr. Imran Rahman, from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, said: The application of computational fluid dynamics, has allowed us to study the swimming performance of ancient vertebrates and learn more about their position in evolutionary history.

Dr. Carlos Martinez Perez, from the University of Valencia (Spain), added: Our simulations reveal that the different species of osteostracans show equally different hydrodynamic efficiencies. Some of them performed better when moving close to the sea floor or riverbed while others performed better when swimming freely in the water.

Professor Phil Donoghue, another Bristol co-author, concluded: The different species body shapes are adapted to different environments, revealing distinct lifestyles among these groups of jawless early vertebrates.

Our results calls into question the prevailing view that these extinct groups of jawless vertebrates were ecologically constrained and reveals the main evolutionary hypothesis for the origin of jawed vertebrates is more complex than previously thought.

Reference: Computational Fluid Dynamics Suggests Ecological Diversification among Stem-Gnathostomes by Humberto G. Ferrn, Carlos Martnez-Prez, Imran A. Rahman, Vctor Selles de Lucas, Hctor Botella and Philip C.J. Donoghue, 1 October 2020, Current Biology.DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.09.031

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Classical Evolutionary Story Overturned: Our Mud-Slurping Chinless Ancestors Had All the Moves - SciTechDaily

Tom Adamich: The evolution of medicine in Monroe – Monroe Evening News

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

In his latest history column, Tom Adamich looks at the progress of medical imaging and its impact on Mercy Memorial Hospital.

Having briefly examined Monroes hospital history from the early 1920s to today, I found one aspect of its history particularly interesting medical imagings evolution in Monroe and the people behind it.

I must admit that the topic was also part of my own personal working evolution. One of my first jobs as a young college student was as an X-ray assistant and transporter at Suncoast Hospital an osteopathic hospital owned by Canadians in Largo, Fla. where I spend my late adolescent and teen years.

The hospital served Canadian snow birds who were covered by Canadas national health insurance.

Our resident Monroe-area hospital historian, Carl Anderson of Dundee, once again provided me with a wealth of Monroe medical imaging history.

He spent a successful 40-year career serving Monroe and surrounding areas medical imaging needs performing X-ray, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, CAT SCAN, mammography, and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) techniques and services using the latest technologies available.

Almost all of these medical imaging service techniques (except for basic X-ray technique and technology) were introduced during Andersons career, so he had the responsibility and pleasure of planning, developing and introducing them in Monroe.

Anderson was hired as a radiographer to serve at Mercy-Memorials Mercy Unit in June, 1976. His hiring coincided with the decision to consolidate most Mercy-Memorial medical imaging services to take place on one hospital campus.

Plans to build a new Mercy-Memorial Hospital Radiology Department on the Mercy Unit property began at this time, with Jerry Jorgensen, Administrative Director of Radiology, leading the efforts. Anderson was quickly promoted to chief radiographer in December, 1976, and helped in the medical imaging space and workflow design process.

According to a January/February 1982 edition of the Mercy-Memorial News, relocation of the Mercy-Memorial Radiology Department to the newly-constructed location at the Mercy Units Macomb Street campus was to begin in March, 1982, and completed by December of that year.

As was mentioned earlier, many new medical imaging technologies were introduced during Andersons Mercy-Memorial years. Nuclear medicine (the ability to image internal organs) was introduced in 1980.

CAT SCAN (also known as Computerized Axial Tomography having a 360 view of body parts using radiation) debuted at Mercy-Memorial in 1984.

MRI (also known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging another 360 view technique that doesnt use radiation) became available in Monroe in 1990 with significant upgrades made during the early 2000s.

Anderson also led a plan to digitize X-rays known as PACS Picture Archive and Communication System.

Prior to PACS, X-rays used silver halide film which turns dark when exposed to radiation. The exposed X-ray film had to be manually passed from a cassette holder to a darkroom passbox and replaced with unexposed film to be used for the next X-ray.

The PACS process uses a computer program to gather a digital image from a reusable imaging plate instead of the cassette containing film.

Mercy-Memorials medical imaging program and radiology services had a strong foundation provided by long-time radiographer Betty Perrini.

According to Anderson, Perrini was hired at Mercy Hospital in 1941 as a teenager. She was self-trained with guidance from Mercy Hospital Radiologists Dr. McGeogh and Dr. Mitchell and ran the Mercy Hospital Radiology Department during those early years, including transporting patients and processing films tasks I knew very well myself as an X-ray assistant.

She later transitioned to an office management role. Perrinis many contributions and historical perspective were key to numerous successful transitions and advances made by the Mercy-Memorial Radiology Department.

Perrini retired in 1987 and passed away in 2003 at the age of 81. Both Perrinis legacy and Andersons continue at ProMedica Monroe Regional Hospital.

Tom Adamich is professor of technical services and reference librarian at Monroe County Community College. He writes a continuing series examining the history of Monroe County. He can be reached at tadamich@monroeccc.edu.

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Tom Adamich: The evolution of medicine in Monroe - Monroe Evening News

Genetic tracing ‘barcode’ is rapidly revealing COVID-19’s journey and evolution – Newswise

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Newswise Drexel University researchers have reported a method to quickly identify and label mutated versions of the virus that causes COVID-19. Their analysis, using information from a global database of genetic information gleaned from coronavirus testing, suggests that there are at least 8 to 14 slightly different versions of the virus infecting people in America, some of which are either the same as, or have subsequently evolved from, strains directly from Asia, while others are the same as those found in Europe.

First developed as a way of parsing genetic samples to get a snapshot of the mix of bacteria, the genetic analysis tool teases out patterns from volumes of genetic information and can identify whether a virus has genetically changed. They can then use the pattern to categorize viruses with small genetic differences using tags called Informative Subtype Markers (ISM).

Applying the same method to process viral genetic data can quickly detect and categorize slight genetic variations in the SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the group reported in a paper recently published in the journal,PLoS Computational Biology.The genetic analysis tool, designed by Drexel graduate researcher Zhengqiao Zhao, that generates these labels is publicly available forCOVID-19 researchers on GitHub.

"The types of SARS-CoV-2 viruses that we see in tests from Asia and Europe is different than the types we're seeing in America," saidGail Rosen, PhD,a professor inDrexel's College of Engineering, who led the development of the tool. "Identifying the variations allows us to see how the virus has changed as it has traveled from population to population. It can also show us the areas where social distancing has been successful at isolating COVID-19."

The ISM tool is particularly useful because it does not require analysis of the full genetic sequence of the virus to identify its mutations. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, this means reducing the 30,000-base-long genetic code of the virus to a subtype label 20 bases long.

The ISM tool also identified certain positions in the virus's genetic sequence that changed together as the virus spread. The researchers found that from early April to the end of the summer, three positions in the SARS-CoV-2 sequence mutated at the same time. Those positions are in different parts of the genetic sequence. One part is thought to be associated with cellular signaling and replication. Another portion is associated with formation of the protein spike - the part of the virus that enables its entry into healthy cells - changed in tandem with a third portion of code, which doesn't translate to protein.

While more investigation is needed on how these simultaneous mutations impact the transmission and severity of the virus, sites that change together can be used to consolidate the subtype label into 11 bases, which could make downstream analysis more efficient, according to the researchers.

"It's the equivalent of scanning a barcode instead of typing in the full product code number," Rosen said. "And right now, we're all trying to get through the grocery store a bit faster. For scientists this means being able to move to higher-level analysis much faster. For example, it can be a faster process in studying which virus versions could be affecting health outcomes. Or, public health officials can track whether new cases are the result of local transmission or coming from other regions of the United States or parts of the world."

While these genetic differences might not be enough to delineate a new strain of virus, Rosen's group suggests understanding these genetically significant "subtypes," where they're being found and how prevalent they are in these areas is data granular enough to be useful.

"This allows us to see the very specific fingerprint of COVID-19 from each region around the world, and to look closely at smaller regions to see how it is different," Rosen said. "Our preliminary analysis, using publicly available data from across the world, is showing that the combination of subtypes of virus found in New York is most similar to those found in Austria, France and Central Europe, but not Italy. And the subtype from Asia, that was detected here early in the pandemic has not spread very much, instead we are seeing a new subtype that only exists in America as the one most prevalent in Washington state and on the west coast."

In addition to helping scientists understand how the virus is changing and spreading, this method can also reveal the portion of its genetic code that appears to remain resistant to mutations - a discovery that could be exploited by treatments to combat the virus.

"We're seeing that the spike protein and the part of the virus responsible for packaging its genetic material have developed a few major mutations, but otherwise they are changing at a slower rate," said Bahrad Sokhansanj, PhD, a visiting scholar at Drexel. "Importantly, both are key targets for understanding the body's immune response, identifying antiviral therapeutics, and designing vaccines.

Rosen's Ecological and Evolutionary Signal-Processing and Informatics Laboratory will continue to analyze COVID-19 data as it is collected and to support public health researchers using the ISM process.

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Genetic tracing 'barcode' is rapidly revealing COVID-19's journey and evolution - Newswise

Tom Muller on Designing the Evolution of X – Marvel Entertainment

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Marvel.com: Lastly, do you have any advice for creators when it comes to designing their comics look and identity?

Tom Muller: If they can, work with a designer. They will always bring a fresh perspective to that comic; and the collaboration will usually yield a stronger design in the end. Look for design inspiration outside comics. Look at magazine publishing, packaging, signage, book design, film, video games, technology. Aim for design to be an integral part of the creation of the comic.

To learn more about Tom Muller and his works, visit hellomuller.com.

Continue Dawn of X weekly with Marvel Unlimitedand choose from over 27,000 more comicsright now! What will you be reading this week? Join the conversation at @MarvelUnlimited, and stay tunedtoourTwitterandFacebookchannels for more weekly announcements and updates.

For more of Marvels greatest comic books in print, please reach out to your local comic book shop to ask about services they may offer, including holding or creating pull lists, curbside pick-ups, special deliveries and other options to accommodate. Find andsupport your local comic book shopathttp://comicshoplocator.com.

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The Evolution of Far-Right Extremism Online Post-2015 in the United States – HSToday

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Previous research has considered major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to be the most widely used social media platforms for violent extremism and violent extremist content in the United States.[i] Other platforms such as Google+, Kik, LinkedIn, Myspace, Vimeo, and 8chan have also been considered as popular platforms for far-right content.[ii] However, research suggests that the popularity and accessibility of certain platforms has changed rapidly in recent years. The authors study revealed that social media platforms were not all equally utilized and therefore were categorized across a spectrum of popularity. The categories used to describe this spectrum of popularity were Highly Active, Moderately Active, Little/No Far Right Activity, and Offline (see table 1).

The four largest social media platforms globally Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube were placed in the Moderately Active category. This was a particularly interesting finding, as locating far-right content on Facebook and Twitter was difficult despite long being considered hot spots for far-right recruitment, propaganda, and conversations. There were thousands of tweets discussing political ideologies, but the majority of conversations generally elucidated the current polarization of party lines. Facebook was found to be much more moderate than expected as well. Part of the difficulty finding far-right content on Facebook may have been due to Facebooks Community Standards. Facebook has one of the most sweeping content takedown policies of any of the platforms explored. Facebooks Community Standards directly states that it will remove terrorist activity, organized hate, or any incitement of violence that is deemed credible.[iii]

There is a transparent shift happening from Facebook and Twitter to Gab and Parler from both moderate conservatives and those with far-right ideologies in order to protest against Twitter and Facebooks strict content removal policies. During the analysis of far-right content on Twitter, the authors discovered a tweet put out by California Congressman Devin Nunes on June 24, 2020, asking his followers Are you on Parler yet? (see image 1). Congressman Nunes continued advocating for the right wing to leave Twitter in two more tweets in the following days, with both receiving high interactions. Congressman Nunes efforts helped catapult Parler to the No. 1 ranking social media app available on the Apple Store, overtaking Twitter and Reddit. Although this tweet itself cannot be categorized as far-right content, it reveals a very open and transparent pushback from the right wing to move away from Twitter and Facebook to sites that emphasize freedom of speech and less censorship.

Five of the platforms analyzed in this study 4chan, Bitchute, Gab, Parler, and Qpost/Q Alerts were placed in the High Activity category. Bitchute has flown under the radar of many CVE stakeholders and was not touched upon in any of the previous literature before this study. The platform is a video-sharing source that is largely filled with false or questionable news articles, conspiracy theories, and far-right propaganda. Further, 4chan hosts an entire thread titled Politically Incorrect or /pol/ where analysis found a plethora of far-right content and extremist users within the comment sections of images. The /pol/ thread has been connected to the novel boogaloo bois movement.

Also surfacing out of 4chan is highly active online platform QAnon (Qalerts). QAnon is a conspiracy theory set in a belief that President Trump is going to bring justice to a highly corrupt government system with undertones of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and justified acts of violence.[iv] Not only is QAnon its own popular platform that is filled with far-right extremism, it is also a widely popular hashtag across other platforms. The QAnon platform was just as full of far-right content as Gab and Parler, if not more. 4chan, Bitchute and QAnon will continue to be three of the most critical online platforms for far-right propaganda, especially as users move away from mainstream platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube due to content guidelines and takedown policies.

The study also utilized content analyses to examine patterns in tones, linguistics, symbols, and hashtags. Most threads and conversations turned into echo chambers of belittlement and hostility and revealed a common belief that the United States is headed toward an inevitable second civil war for which the far-right is prepared and trained. Patriotic expressions were apparent in the tone, word patterns, symbols, and profiles of far-right users. The words civil war, war, revolution, invasion, left wing militants, and an urging for Americans to train for war were repeatedly seen throughout the content. Many of the memes that were pushed out by far-right users included bald eagles, military personnel, weapons, the American flag, and the Confederate flag, further emphasizing the patriotic expression that is critical to the identity of many far-right extremists (see image 2).

One of the primary goals of the authors study was to contribute to the literature on group polarization and groupthink within the phenomenon of violent extremism. Group polarization theory often leads to an us versus them mentality. The content analysis revealed a pattern in pronoun usage. Rather than users using the first person I when sharing their views, the majority of content used the plural us and we. There is an us versus them mentality within the posts, which does fall in line with the theme of war and engaging with some sort of perceived enemy. This was one of the most apparent patterns in the data analyzed as well. The far-right has collective enemies that are seen as a threat, while also heavily uniting themselves online to further share hate. There was also large evidence of groupthink dynamics occurring online. When one individual hinted toward violence, it often led to others arguing for even further damage (see image 3). The users rapidly went down an escalating echo chamber only making their potential plots more and more dangerous and risky. The ideas became more extreme than the original poster had initially decided on their own, and were influenced by others agreement and escalation, which is the dangerous essence of groupthink.

Conclusion

The popularity of particular platforms and the rise of new ones changes rapidly. The United States is witnessing another one of those changes as masses of the far-right, as well as moderate conservatives, move away from sites that have content and user guidelines to less-monitored platforms, such as Bitchute, 4chan, Gab, and Parler. These platforms are often such drastic echo chambers with no desire for progressive outgroup conversation that effective counternarratives may be difficult if not tailored correctly. P/CVE stakeholders must shift with this trend to be producing content and surveilling manifestations of VE behavior or activity on these platforms more heavily than before.[v]

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The Evolution of Far-Right Extremism Online Post-2015 in the United States - HSToday

The evolution of Bafana Bafana kit – FourFourTwo

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Following the unveiling of the new Bafana Bafana kit on Monday evening,FourFourTwoSA goes down memory lane to look at jerseys worn from the early 1990s to the present day.

The South African national team announced French sportswear manufacturer Lecoq Sportif as their new sponsor in April after ending their five-year sponsorship with global brand Nike.

Molefi Ntseki recently named his 25-man squad for their upcoming international friendlies against Namibia and Zambia at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg.

The South African national team will be donning their new Lecoq Sportif sponsored kit take on Namibia in their first friendly match on 8 October before facing Zambia three days later on 11 October 2020.

Take a look all the Bafana Bafana kits down the years:

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The evolution of Bafana Bafana kit - FourFourTwo

4 Generations Of Subaru Impreza WRX Shows Its AWD Evolution – Motor1

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

The Subaru Impreza isn't the most exciting model when it stands on its own. However, the addition of three letters WRX or six WRX STI changes the game, quickly becoming a formidable performance machine that takes full advantage of Subaru's all-wheel-drive expertise. But the car we have today is a far departure from the Impreza that Subaru introduced nearly 20 years ago.

The US missed out on the first-generation Impreza WRX and WRX STI, which are some of the most desirable models today. The stripped-down RA version took things to the extreme with no A/C, anti-lock brakes, or horn. In 1994, Subaru introduced the WRX STI, which took the WRX and further upgraded it.

The second-generation Impreza introduced the controversial "Bug Eye" design while increasing the model's dimensions. The "New Age" Impreza design saw the coupe body style disappear, but it was also the generation that saw the WRX arrive in the US for the first time in 2002. The polarizing styling would go through two revisions before the third-generation model's debut.

The first facelift attempted to rework the front-end design, eliminating the round "Bug Eye" design only to replace it with what'd be dubbed the "Blob Eye" design, which was an improvement. The WRX model also got a tweaked suspension for improved handling while other small changes were made inside. The 2004 design previewed the next-gen redesign that'd arrive just two years later.

The second facelift, pulling from the automaker's aviation heritage, introduced the automaker's new corporate face. It was a substantial refresh with new headlights, a new grille, and a new bumper. Subaru fans nicknamed it the "Hawkeye" design. The updated model also saw Subaru replace the WRX's 2.0-liter engine for a larger 2.5-liter one while tweaking the chassis and brakes.

The third-generation Impreza further refined the car's design, growing in size again over the outgoing model it was wider and longer than before. The third-gen also saw Subaru replace the wagon with a five-door hatchback variant. The new WRX was mostly unchanged, carrying over the previous-gen model's engine with a few other changes inside and out.

The fourth-gen WRX marked a shift for the automaker, removing the WRX and WRX STI models from under the Impreza brand in the US. However, it still shares an overall shape with its former stablemate, though it wears a unique front end and rear quarters. Subaru also introduced the turbocharged 2.0-liter FA20F engine with the WRX. The fifth-gen model is expected to arrive in 2021 or 2022.

4 Generations Of Subaru Impreza WRX Shows Its AWD Evolution - Motor1

A sleep-like state in Hydra unravels conserved sleep mechanisms during the evolutionary development of the central nervous system – Science Advances

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

INTRODUCTION

Sleep-like states have been defined in a wide range of animal taxa (1). The neural mechanisms underlying sleep are substantially conserved among vertebrates, arthropods, and nematodes. However, it remains elusive how the molecular commonality of sleep regulation has been shaped during the evolutionary process of the central nervous system (CNS). In this sense, Cnidaria is ideally positioned in the phylogenetic tree of the animal kingdom (2). Cnidarians lack a centralized nervous system and thus are thought not to have a brain. Their diffuse nerve net innervates most parts of the body, likely representing the ancestral organization of the nervous system. Daily periodic quiescence has been observed in cnidarian species. For example, soft corals display 24-hour pulsation-rest rhythms in their tentacle movement (3). The box jellyfish Tripedalia is active during the day, whereas Copula exhibits nocturnal behaviors (4). The upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea also display sleep-like behaviors (5) comparable to those in other animals with a well-defined CNS. Their common features include (i) reversible behavioral quiescence, (ii) reduced responsiveness to stimuli (i.e., high arousal threshold), (iii) regulation by circadian clocks and sleep homeostasis, and (iv) pharmacological effects of sleep-inducing drugs such as melatonin and a histamine receptor antagonist. These findings support the hypothesis that the phylogenetic origin of sleep has preceded the evolution of a centralized nervous system (5). We further reasoned that comparative analyses of the sleep-regulatory mechanisms across animal species, including those with a poorly defined CNS, should elucidate how this essential physiology has evolved along with the development of the CNS.

We used Hydra vulgaris as the cnidarian model of sleep (Fig. 1A). Hydra consists of only two cell layers (6) (Fig. 1B), displaying the simplest body plan among cnidarians. To detect any sleep-like state in Hydra, we video-recorded their movement under 12-hour light:12-hour dark (LD) cycles (Fig. 1C). We measured changes in the pixel value between two consecutive imaging frames at 5-s intervals. Any differences above a threshold were then regarded as movements in individual animals (Fig. 1D). We also calculated the ratio of frames with detectable movements in a 2-min bin (i.e., fraction movement) and defined behavioral quiescence if no movement was detected in more than 50% frames per 2-min bin (i.e., fraction movement <0.5). This frame subtraction analysis revealed that Hydra exhibited diurnal behaviors in LD conditions (Fig. 1E).

(A) H. vulgaris (strain 105). The white bar indicates 1 mm. (B) Two-cell layers in Hydra. Ect, ectoderm; End, endoderm. (C and D) Behavioral recording and data processing (see Materials and Methods). LED, light-emitting diode. (E) Diurnal behaviors in Hydra under LD cycles. ZT, zeitgeber time (lights-on at ZT0; lights-off at ZT12). The last feeding was >24 hours (ZT8) before loading into the imaging chamber (ZT10). Data represent mean SEM (n = 32). (F) Light-induced reversibility of the quiescent state. The size of pixel changes between 5-s frames, and fraction movement in 2-min bins was traced in a single animal subject to a light pulse at ZT16. (G and H) Inverse correlation of quiescent bout length and latency to the light-induced arousal at ZT16 (n = 16 to 89). Box plots range from Q1 to Q3 quartile; crosses and horizontal lines indicate mean and median values, respectively; whiskers extend to minimum or maximum values of 1.5 interquartile range. (I and J) Daily sleep profiles represent mean SEM (n = 32). Box plots represent sleep amount, averaged sleep bout length (ABL), and total number of sleep bouts. (K) Quantification of Hydra movements using averaged pixel change between frames (n = 32). n.s., not significant. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, and ****P < 0.0001 by Aligned ranks transformation analysis of variance (ANOVA), Wilcoxon rank sum test [(H); Sleep and # Sleep bouts in (J); left in (K)]; by Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Dunns multiple comparisons test [ABL in (J)]; or by Mann-Whitney U test [right in (K)].

We further analyzed the quiescent state in Hydra based on the behavioral criteria of sleep (7). Hydra had a reversible episode of the behavioral quiescence because they spontaneously entered a quiescent period, while a light pulse at night readily interrupted their quiescent state (Fig. 1F and movie S1). The latency to light-induced arousal inversely correlated with the intensity of light stimuli at night (Fig. 1, G and H). Animals in the quiescent state for longer than 20 min showed a significant delay in their responses to the light pulse (Fig. 1H). A similar delay in sensory responsiveness was observed with the behavioral quiescence when we provided Hydra with reduced glutathione (GSH) as a feeding signal. Hydra forms tentacle balls as a sensory response to GSH (fig. S1A) (8). Latency to the sensory response substantially increased when GSH was given to animals in the quiescence phase, not less than 20 min (fig. S1B). These results together indicate a high arousal threshold with a >20-min episode of the behavioral quiescence, operationally defining the length of a sleep bout in Hydra.

The daily averaged profiles of sleep bout length and sleep duration time in LD cycles indicated that Hydra displayed longer sleep at night (Fig. 1, I and J), consistent with their diurnal activity. As expected, Hydra showed a low amount of movements during sleep bouts, as assessed by the averaged pixel change per awake-bout frame or sleep-bout frame during the LD cycle (Fig. 1K). Also, a quantitative trace of their head positions using the Tracker software (https://physlets.org/tracker/) revealed that Hydra moved shorter distances at lower velocity during sleep bouts (fig. S1C). Feeding behaviors in Hydra affect general movement (9). Fed animals stay rather inactive until they complete digestion, absorption, and excretion, possibly masking any sleep-like quiescence. Given that we routinely fed Hydra cultures two to four times per week, we performed all our sleep analysis in nonfeeding conditions. Nonetheless, we confirmed that prolonged (up to 136 hours) or shorter (down to 16 hours) starvation did not make any significant change in Hydra sleep behaviors under our experimental conditions (fig. S1D), although starvation is thought to suppress sleep for foraging in a range of animals from flies to humans (10).

A previous study has defined six housekeeping behaviors in Hydra (fig. S2A and movie S2) (11). Our frame subtraction analysis reliably detected the pixel changes in frames corresponding to silent, elongation, body sway, and contraction, among others (fig. S2B). However, ~35 and ~72% of bending and tentacle sway frames were not detected by the pixel size, indicating that our imaging analysis might underestimate these two types of Hydra movements. We manually scored individual housekeeping behaviors during the wake or sleep bouts throughout an LD cycle. This analysis showed that Hydra spent their sleep bouts in either a silent or a tentacle-swaying state (fig. S2C). Nonetheless, tentacle swaying was also observed during ~40% of their awake time, and thus, we concluded that silent behavior is relatively specific to the sleep-like state in Hydra.

It has long been suggested that both circadian rhythms and sleep homeostasis shape daily patterns of sleep-wake cycles (12). To examine any circadian regulation of Hydra sleep, we monitored their sleep behaviors under constant light (LL) or constant dark (DD), where the absence of any light transitions allowed endogenous clocks to run free. Although Hydra displayed overt rhythms in their daily sleep-wake cycles in LD conditions (Fig. 1I), these rhythmic behaviors disappeared in either LL or DD conditions (fig. S3, A to C). It is thus likely that Hydra lacks circadian clocks, but they display behavioral responses to light transitions (13). However, constant conditions revealed shorter periodic changes in Hydra behaviors. Autocorrelation analyses detected 4-hour rhythms evidently in DD fraction movement, as well as in DD sleep (fig. S3D). Those ultradian rhythms were less robust in LL sleep, possibly indicating dampening effects of LL.

To assess any behavioral changes in sleep-deprived Hydra, we applied gentle vibration to the culture chamber for the last 6 hours at night under LD cycles and then video-recorded Hydra movements starting from lights-on on the next day (Fig. 2A). This mechanical sleep deprivation (MSD) notably lengthened the sleep duration time during the subsequent L phase as rebound sleep. We also found that sleep-deprived Hydra had a shorter latency to sleep onset, likely indicating a homeostatic increase in sleep drive (Fig. 2A) (14). In contrast, daytime MSD did not lead to a sleep rebound in the following D phase (Fig. 2B). Those sleep-deprived animals instead displayed short D sleep, possibly indicating persistent effects of the daytime mechanical stress on Hydra behaviors (Fig. 2B). Because our imaging-based sleep analysis did not allow us to monitor the degree of sleep deprivation during mechanical stress, we further established a temperature-dependent sleep deprivation protocol in Hydra (Fig. 2, C and D). Animals were first entrained at low temperature (10C) for the measurement of their baseline sleep and then subject to high temperature shifts (20C) for the last 6 hours in either L or D phase. This transient increase in ambient temperature reduced L and D sleep comparably (Fig. 2E). However, a rebound sleep was evident only after D sleep deprivation (Fig. 2F), possibly indicating differential accumulations of the sleep pressure during the day and night. These behavioral features convincingly demonstrate a sleep-like state in Hydra and its homeostatic regulation, particularly during the D phase, consistent with their diurnal behaviors.

(A and B) Sleep rebound after MSD for the last 6 hours in the D phase (A, blue), but not in the L phase (B, orange), under LD cycles. Box plots represent sleep amount and latency to sleep onset after light transitions (n = 13 to 16). Yellow and blue bars indicate light and dark phases, respectively. *P < 0.05 by one-tailed Students t test (Sleep) or by Mann-Whitney U test (Sleep latency). (C and D) Sleep rebound after sleep deprivation by a 6-hour shift to high ambient temperature in the D phase (C, green), but not in the L phase (D, purple), under LD cycles (n = 51). Green and purple colors indicate data from sleep-deprived animals during the D and L phase, respectively. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, and ****P < 0.0001 by repeated-measures ANOVA, Friedmans test (Sleep min/last 6 hours) or by Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test, one-tailed (Sleep min/12 hours). (E) Comparison of the amount of sleep loss by high ambient temperature in the D phase (green) or L phase (purple). n.s., not significant by unpaired t test with Welchs correction, two-tailed. (F) Comparison of the amount of rebound sleep after nighttime (green) or daytime (purple) sleep deprivation. ****P < 0.0001 by Mann Whitney test, two-tailed.

Melatonin is a sleep-promoting hormone in various animal taxa, including in humans (5, 15, 16). The incubation of melatonin with Hydra culture medium increased daily sleep amount and the number of sleep bouts in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. 3A and fig. S4A). However, we could not observe any strong correlation between melatonin concentration and the averaged pixel change per awake-bout frame (referred to as waking activity hereafter) (Fig. 3A). It was thus less likely that melatonin administration made the animals sick or sluggish to cause long sleep. Given that melatonin also promotes sleep in the jellyfish Cassiopea (5), these results suggest its conserved role between cnidarians and mammals. The Hydra genome also encodes orthologous genes that support the transmission of sleep-relevant neurotransmitters in other species (2). These include tyrosine hydroxylase, 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) decarboxylase, and dopamine receptors for dopamine biosynthesis and transmission, and glutamic acid decarboxylase, vesicular -aminobutyric acid (GABA) transporter, GABA receptors, and GABA transaminase for GABA biosynthesis, transmission, and degradation (table S1). We confirmed that most of these homologs were also conserved in other cnidarian species (table S1). Moreover, previous studies have validated their physiological relevance in the GSH-induced feeding response and the pacemaker activity implicated in Hydra body contraction (17). We, therefore, examined the possible roles of these neurotransmitters in Hydra sleep.

(A) Effects of melatonin administration on daily sleep amount, ABL, L sleep latency, the number of sleep bouts, and waking activity (averaged pixel change per awake-bout frame) under LD cycles (n = 12 to 26). (B) Effects of neurotransmitter administration (100 M) on LD sleep (n = 15 to 50). DA, dopamine; GABA, -aminobutyric acid; H, histamine; 5-HT, serotonin; OA, octopamine; ACh, acetylcholine; NE, norepinephrine; Glu, glutamate. (C and D) Effects of GABA transaminase inhibitor (EOS) (n = 18 to 28) or GABA transporter inhibitor (NipA) on LD sleep (n = 9 to 21). (E and F) Effects of a DA precursor (l-DOPA) (n = 9 to 17) or a tyrosine hydroxylase inhibitor (3IY) on LD sleep (n = 14 to 26). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.01, and ****P < 0.0001 by one-way ANOVA, Holm-Sidaks multiple comparisons test [Sleep in (A) and (E); # Sleep bouts in (B to (D)]; by Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Dunns multiple comparisons test [Sleep in (C) and (D); ABL in (A), (B), and (E); Latency in (A) and (C) to (F); # Sleep bouts in (A) and (F); Waking activity in (A) and (C) to (E)]; by Welchs ANOVA, Dunnetts T3 multiple comparisons test [# Sleep bouts in (E)]; or by Aligned ranks transformation ANOVA, Wilcoxon rank sum test [Sleep in (B) and (F); ABL in (C), (D), and (F); Latency and Waking activity in (B)].

The administration of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA potently increased daily sleep amount and the number of sleep bouts (Fig. 3B and fig. S4B). Also, the pharmacological increase in synaptic GABA levels by chemical inhibitors of the GABA-metabolizing transaminase [ethanolamine-O-sulfate (EOS)] or the GABA reuptake transporter [nipecotic acid (NipA)] promoted Hydra sleep (Fig. 3, C and D, and fig. S4, C and D), consistent with general sleep-promoting effects of GABA. To our surprise, the administration of dopamine, a well-established arousal neurotransmitter that suppresses sleep in higher animals (18), promoted Hydra sleep as potently as did GABA (Fig. 3B). This observation was further confirmed by the sleep-promoting effects of a dopamine precursor [L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-DOPA)] (Fig. 3E and fig. S4E) and by the wake-promoting effects of 3-iodo-tyrosine (3IY), a chemical inhibitor of tyrosine hydroxylase that mediates the rate-limiting conversion of tyrosine to l-DOPA for dopamine biosynthesis (Fig. 3F and fig. S4F). Sleep-promoting effects of GABA and dopamine transmission were evident generally on D sleep (fig. S4, B to F), although cumulative effects of their pharmacological manipulations could explain these observations. Long sleep phenotypes caused by the pharmacological elevation of GABA and dopamine levels could not be attributable to their general effects on waking activity (Fig. 3, B to F).

Given that GABA and dopamine have opposing effects on the duration of the GSH-induced feeding response in Hydra (17, 19), our findings indicate that GABA and dopamine transmissions specifically interact in different behaviors. These results further support the ancestral origin of sleep regulation by GABA and dopamine, among other neurotransmitters. We reason that the dopaminergic sleep-regulatory pathway may have switched its mode from sleep-promoting to wake-promoting during the evolutionary development of the CNS (see Discussion).

To elucidate the molecular basis of Hydra sleep behaviors, we compared the gene expression profiles of control and sleep-deprived animals. The microarray-based quantification identified 148 and 64 genes that were up-regulated and down-regulated, respectively, upon MSD (Fig. 4A and table S2). Using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we further validated 52 and 35 genes that were up-regulated and down-regulated, respectively, upon MSD (Fig. 4B). Among these sleep-relevant genes, we identified 41 Hydra genes that displayed a 40% sequence similarity to their homologs in humans, mice, and Drosophila (Fig. 4C). The Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis of this set of homologous genes did not reveal any enrichment of sleep-relevant terms in each animal species (table S2). However, the common homologs among the three animals included the voltage-gated potassium channel Shaker that was initially identified as a sleep-promoting gene from a forward genetic screen in Drosophila (20) and the cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP)dependent protein kinase 1 (PRKG1) that showed sleep-promoting functions in worms, flies, and mammals (2123). Whole-mount in situ hybridization revealed that Hydra PRKG1 expression was enriched around the hypostome (Fig. 4D), possibly indicating a role in predation. The administration of a PRKG1 inhibitor (KT5823) suppressed Hydra sleep in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. 4E). A PRKG1 activator (8-pCPT-cGMP) consistently promoted sleep while not compromising waking activity at the highest dosage tested (Fig. 4F). Accordingly, PRKG1 may represent one of the ancestral genes of sleep regulation.

(A) Microarray analysis of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in mechanically sleep-deprived Hydra (MSD). Mean and SD were set to 0 and 1, respectively, and expression levels were normalized accordingly. (B) Pairwise comparison of log2-transformed fold changes (FCs) in gene expression by MSD (88 genes, correlation coefficient R = 0.92). Data represent mean SEM (n = 2 for microarray; n = 3 for quantitative PCR). (C) Diagram of the DEG homologs. The numbers of homologous genes were indicated. (D) Whole-mount in situ hybridization of Hydra PRKG1. A sense probe in the thumbnail served as a negative control. White bars indicate 250 m (left) and 100 m (right), respectively. (E and F) Effects of a PRKG1 inhibitor (KT5823) (n = 25 to 66) or a PRKG1 activator (8-pCPT-cGMP) (n = 9 to 26) on LD sleep. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, and ****P < 0.0001 by one-way ANOVA, Holm-Sidaks multiple comparisons test [Sleep and # Sleep bouts in (F)]; by Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Dunns multiple comparisons test [Latency in (E) and (F); Waking activity in (E)]; or by Aligned ranks transformation ANOVA, Wilcoxon rank sum test [Sleep and # Sleep bouts in (E); ABL in (E) and (F)].

Given these findings, we hypothesized that Hydra genes identified by our gene expression profiling might have as-yet-unidentified sleep-regulatory functions. Because a large-scale genetic approach was relatively limited in Hydra, we examined the possible roles of their homologous genes in a Drosophila model of sleep behaviors. Several of these candidate genes, including both up-regulated and down-regulated ones in sleep-deprived Hydra, increased daily sleep amount when their expression was pan-neuronally depleted by transgenic RNA interference in Drosophila (Fig. 5A and table S3). These wake-promoting genes included CG9005 (family with sequence similarity 214 member A), CG10082 [inositol hexakisphosphate kinase 1 (IP6K1)], CG12795 (zinc finger AN1-type containing 2B), sprouty (sprouty RTK signaling antagonist 2), Ornithine aminotransferase (OAT), rolling pebbles (tetratricopeptide repeat, ankyrin repeat, and coiled-coil containing 2), Goosecoid (goosecoid homeobox), Sterol carrier protein X-related thiolase (sterol carrier protein 2), Rho GTPase activating protein at 102A (Rho GTPase activating protein 6), lethal (2) essential for life (crystallin alpha B), and CG31743 (carbohydrate sulfotransferase 11). The pan-neuronal depletion of some of these genes reduced waking activity (i.e., activity count per waking minute) (fig. S5), and the impaired locomotor activity might thus have contributed to the long sleep phenotypes. Nonetheless, low waking activity in CG9005-depleted flies, for example, did not cause any D sleep phenotypes (fig. S5), suggesting that waking activity and sleep behaviors may not necessarily be coupled. These results support our hypothesis above, although it remains to be determined whether these Drosophila genes are expressed differently in sleep-deprived flies or play a role in sleep homeostasis.

(A) Effects of the pan-neuronal depletion of individual DEGs on daily sleep amount in Drosophila (n = 15 to 219). Gene names in black/bold or gray colors indicate RNA interference (RNAi) lines that display significant sleep phenotypes compared to both transgenic controls (Gal4 control and RNAi control) or to only either one of the two, respectively. (B) Biochemical pathways of the urea cycle. (C and D) Effects of dietary ornithine on Drosophila sleep in LD cycles (n = 36 to 52). Raw data were collected individually from mated female, virgin female, and male flies. Yellow and blue colors indicate light and dark phases, respectively. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, and ***P < 0.001 by Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Dunns multiple comparisons test (sleep amount); by Mann-Whitney U test (latency in female and virgin); or by Welchs t test (latency in male). (E) Whole-mount in situ hybridization of Hydra OAT. A sense probe in the thumbnail served as a negative control. White bars indicate 250 m (left) and 100 m (right), respectively. (F and G) Effects of ornithine administration (n = 10 to 33) or an OAT inhibitor (L-canaline) (n = 19 to 30) on Hydra sleep in LD cycles. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, and ***P < 0.001 by Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Dunns multiple comparisons test [Sleep and # Sleep bouts in (G); ABL and Latency in (F) and (G); Waking activity in (F)] or by Aligned ranks transformation ANOVA, Wilcoxon rank sum test [Sleep in (F); Waking activity in (G)].

Ornithine is a nonessential amino acid but is involved in the urea cycle (Fig. 5B) (24, 25). The mitochondrial enzyme OAT mediates a metabolic step that subsequently converts ornithine into proline or glutamate. OAT deficiency thus leads to an increase in plasma ornithine levels, causing gyrate atrophy that results in retinal degeneration in humans (25). Consistent with the long sleep observed in OAT-depleted flies, we found that the oral administration of ornithine to wild-type flies increased daily sleep amount and shortened the latency to sleep onset (Fig. 5, C and D). The sleep-promoting effects of dietary ornithine were robust in mated females but not in virgins or male flies, implicating a female-specific post-mating mechanism in ornithine-dependent sleep regulation (26).

Hydra OAT expression was enriched in nematoblasts (Fig. 5E and table S1), progenitors of nematocytes that are responsible for prey capture and protection from predators. Unexpectedly, we observed that dietary ornithine suppressed Hydra sleep in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. 5F). The wake-promoting effects of dietary ornithine were more evident in female Hydra strains, although the baseline sleep duration was longer in females than in males (fig. S6). Moreover, the pharmacological inhibition of OAT similarly suppressed Hydra sleep (Fig. 5G). Given the sleep-promoting effects of dietary ornithine in mammals, including humans (27, 28), our data support the ancient origin of ornithine as a sleep-regulatory molecule. It might also be relevant to the lethargy associated with urea cycle disorders or pregnancy (29, 30). Future studies should determine how ornithine metabolism responds to sleep needs and which specific effector pathway is downstream of sleep-modulatory ornithine in individual animal species.

Previous studies have shown that sleep deprivation suppresses cell proliferation in mammals and Drosophila (31, 32). We reasoned that, if a sleep-like state in Hydra is physiologically relevant, sleep deprivation might impose restrictions on this fundamental physiology in individual cells. Thus, we measured cell proliferation in Hydra using 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine (BrdU) incorporation and compared it between control and sleep-deprived animals (Fig. 6A). Although Hydra exhibited diurnal activity in LD cycles, control animals displayed no significant difference in the relative levels of BrdU incorporation during the L or D phase (fig. S7). However, MSD remarkably reduced the number of proliferative cells (Fig. 6, B to D). It was unlikely that Hydra suppressed cell proliferation due to mechanical stress because pharmacological sleep deprivation using 3IY (a tyrosine hydroxylase inhibitor) or KT5823 (a PRKG1 inhibitor) similarly impaired the BrdU incorporation (Fig. 6, C and D). We further found that sleep-dependent cell proliferation occurred throughout the body column in Hydra, likely reflecting a systemic response to sleep needs (Fig. 6, B and D). We reason that cell proliferation in Hydra is homeostatically regulated in LD cycles, but sleep deprivation substantially disrupts this regulation. These results validate the physiological significance of Hydra sleep. Cellular effects of sleep and the origin of sleep function may thus trace back to ancestral organisms with poorly defined nervous systems.

(A and B) Experimental scheme of cell proliferation assay in sleep-deprived Hydra. Mechanical or pharmacological sleep deprivation was applied for 36 hours before immunostaining. BrdU incorporation was quantified from each body part. (C) Representative images of BrdU and propidium iodide (PI) labeling. The white bar indicates 50 m. HCS, Hydra culture solution (control for MSD and 3IY); MSD, mechanical sleep deprivation; 3IY, 3-iodo-tyrosine (a tyrosine hydroxylase inhibitor; 3 mM); DMSO, dimethyl sulfoxide (vehicle control for KT5823, 0.1%); KT5823, a PRKG1 inhibitor (3 M). (D) Quantitative analyses of BrdU incorporation. Fluorescence signals from anti-BrdU staining were quantified from six regions of interest per animal (n = 5 to 6 animals per condition). Data were normalized to each control group. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, and ****P < 0.0001 by Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA, Dunns multiple comparisons test (upper body), Aligned ranks transformation ANOVA, Wilcoxon rank sum test (the others). P < 0.01 and P < 0.0001 by Mann-Whitney U test.

Our demonstration of the sleep-like state in Hydra and the commonality of sleep-regulatory genes, neurotransmitters, and physiology provide important insights into how ancestral sleep has evolved with developing CNS and how sleep-regulatory pathways have been reorganized accordingly. While the two-process model for shaping daily sleep has been widely accepted (12), free-running circadian rhythms are not readily detectable in Hydra behaviors. This observation contrasts with circadian control of the quiescence state in the cnidarian jellyfish (5). Circadian clocks are not an essential prerequisite for sleep behaviors because animal species with no overt circadian rhythms (e.g., Caenorhabditis elegans) or circadian clock mutants in Drosophila and mammals exhibit sleep. Circadian rhythms have also been observed widely in nonanimal kingdoms, where sleep-like states are not recognized. Nonetheless, our discovery of 4-hour free-running rhythms in Hydra sleep may reflect an evolutionary intermediate for circadian clock-dependent sleep given that circadian rhythms emerge from coupled ultradian oscillators (33). We also reason that the ultradian rhythms in Hydra sleep could be an ancestral form of the sleep-stage cycling in mammals. In this sense, Hydra may represent one of the most primitive animal models for sleep.

Dopamine is a wake-promoting molecule conserved across animal species (1). We, however, showed that dopamine promotes Hydra sleep. This unexpected finding suggests that dopamines sleep-regulatory function may depend on how dopaminergic circuits are incorporated into sleep-regulatory pathways of the developing CNS. Consistent with this idea, dopamine is one of the major arousal neurotransmitters in adult flies, whereas it is dispensable for sleep in developing larvae (31). We speculate that the functional flipping of specific sleep-regulatory pathways (e.g., dopamine and ornithine) may have occurred during the evolutionary development of CNS. On the other hand, sleep-promoting pathways involving melatonin, GABA, or PRKG1 may have persisted in this process.

Our evidence does not necessarily exclude the possible contribution of the diffuse nerve net to Hydra sleep. Emerging evidence, however, indicates the presence of sleep-wake cycles of cell-autonomous nature and sleep-regulatory mechanisms of non-neuronal origin in mammals and Drosophila (1). Likewise, dopamine may contribute to Hydra sleep via its indirect effects on peripheral tissues (e.g., metabolism, cell growth, and oxidative stress) (34). We predict that essential metabolism (e.g., ornithine-derived metabolic pathways) would play a key role in shaping these ancestral forms of sleep, and Hydra would act as an important node in the phylogenetic tree of sleep for validating this hypothesis. Future studies should further mine phylogenetic nodes to illustrate the evolutionary trace of sleep-regulatory mechanisms at high resolution and elucidate the origin of sleep.

Hydra experiments were carried out with a standard Hydra strain (H. vulgaris, strain 105) without buds. Male and female were isolated from strain AEP. Hydra was routinely maintained in a Hydra culture solution [HCS; 1 mM NaCl, 1 mM CaCl2, 0.1 mM KCl, 0.1 mM MgSO4, 1 mM tris-(hydroxymethyl)-amino-methane; pH 7.4, adjusted with HCl] under 12-hour light (450 lux):12-hour dark (0 lux) (LD) cycles at 20C. Hydra was fed with newly hatched Artemia nauplii two to four times per week. Hydra was subject to nonfeeding conditions for over 24 hours before behavioral recording unless otherwise indicated. Drosophila melanogaster was grown on standard cornmeal-yeast-agar medium (5.4% cornmeal, 1.3% yeast, 0.7% soy flour, 0.4% agar, 4.2% starch syrup, 0.4% propionic acid, and 0.8% methyl 4-hydroxybenzoate) at 22 to 25C with 50 to 60% humidity. w1118 (BL5905, Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center) was set as a wild type to generate control flies heterozygous for each transgene or examine effects of dietary ornithine on Drosophila sleep.

The behavioral recording was performed as described previously (13) with minor modifications. Each Hydra was transferred from the LD-entrained culture to a silicone container (16 mm by 16 mm by 5 mm) filled with 1-ml HCS at zeitgeber time 10 (ZT10). After acclimation, video recording was initialized. Hydra was illuminated with infrared light (Sousin Digital) and visualized with an E3 CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) camera (Visualix) through an infrared high-pass filter (FUJIFILM). Frames (1920 1200 pixels) were gained every 5 s using a Visualix ImageView software version 3.7 (Visualix). For pharmacological experiments, drugs were added to HCS 12 hours before the video recording for LD sleep analysis. HCS or dimethyl sulfoxide (0.1%) was used as vehicle control. After each recording, the survival rate of treated animals was compared to that of controls to exclude any toxic effects of drugs.

For the frame subtraction analysis, differences in grayscale values (256 gradations) between each pair of images were calculated for all pixels using ImageJ (35). Significant differences that exceed the automatically determined threshold were detected and regarded as movements. The ratio of frames that displayed any Hydra movement (i.e., fraction movement) was calculated using 2-min, 1-hour, or 24-hour windows. Data recordings from animals with the fraction movement of 24-hour window lower than 0.1 or larger than 0.7 were excluded from further analysis to triage data collected from dead animals or false-positive detections of movements (i.e., intense noise in the recording area). Behavioral quiescence was defined if no movement was detected in more than 50% frames per 2-min bin. The sleep bout was then defined if the duration of quiescence persisted for longer than 20 min (i.e., 10 2-min bin). Additional sleep parameters, including daily sleep amount, averaged sleep bout length, the number of sleep bouts, latency to sleep onset after light transitions, and the averaged pixel change per awake-bout frame (i.e., waking activity), were calculated accordingly. For pharmacological experiments, sleep parameters were calculated from the first-day recordings to avoid any effects from the altered drug concentrations by evaporation. The head positions were tracked using the video analysis and modeling tool Tracker (https://physlets.org/tracker/). After the length calibration, the XY coordinates of a hypostome region were manually pointed and recorded. Using the output data of XY coordinates from the Tracker program, moving distance and speed were calculated. Six housekeeping behaviors (11) were manually scored in individual frames throughout an LD cycle. For the autocorrelation analysis of ultradian rhythms, autocorrelation function was calculated for 50-hour data of fraction movement and sleep amount (per hour) using R (version 3.6.1).

For the measurement of light-induced arousal, light stimulation was given at ZT16 on the second day of sleep recording. Three different intensities of the light-pulse (450 lux for 1 s; 450 lux for 30 s; 1500 lux for 30 s) were applied to analyze a dose-dependent response. Latency to the light response was defined as the duration time before detecting >1-pixel changes in five consecutive frames to minimize any false-positive measurement of Hydra movements. For the measurement of behavioral responses to GSH, Hydra was starved for 48 hours before loading onto the silicone container and incubated with 10 mM GSH between ZT4 and ZT7. This time window allowed a manual application of GSH to individual animals in the imaging chamber while minimally perturbing Hydra sleep by the light transitions in LD cycles. Tentacle movements to the mouth were manually scored using ImageJ (35).

For MSD, a gentle vibration was applied to the silicone containers every 15 min using a microplate mixer (Sanko Junyaku) for the last 6 hours in either L or D phase. The silicone containers were then loaded onto the video-recording system, and their images were recorded for two additional LD cycles. For temperature-dependent sleep deprivation, Hydra movements were first video-recorded at 10C in LD cycles and then the ambient temperature was transiently shifted to 20C for the last 6 hours in either L or D phase.

Unless otherwise indicated, female flies were loaded individually into 65 by 5 mm glass tubes containing 5% sucrose and 2% agar (behavior food) on day 0 and entrained to LD cycles at 25C. For oral administration of l-ornithine, ornithine was directly dissolved in the behavior food. Locomotor activity in individual flies was quantified by the number of infrared beam crosses per minute and recorded using the Drosophila Activity Monitor System (TriKinetics). The asleep bout was defined as an episode during which flies did not cross the infrared beam for 5 min or longer. Sleep behaviors were quantified accordingly using an Excel macro (36). Sleep parameters on day 4 were compared between control and experimental groups.

A custom-made Hydra microarray (Agilent Technologies; 4 44K) was used for differential gene expression profiling between control and sleep-deprived Hydra. Animals were entrained in LD cycles and then sleep-deprived by 6-hour mechanical stimuli before harvest at ZT0. Total RNAs were purified from 10 animals in duplicate using TRIzol Reagent (Thermo Fisher Scientific), and their gene expression analyses were performed as described previously (13). Up-regulated genes were defined by their z scores not less than 2.0 and fold changes not less than 1.5, while down-regulated genes were defined by z scores not more than 2.0 and fold changes not more than 0.66. For quantitative PCR analyses, RNA samples from control or sleep-deprived Hydra were prepared similarly as above. Complementary DNAs (cDNAs) were synthesized from total RNAs using Oligo(dT)12-18 Primer (Invitrogen) with SuperScript III (Thermo Fisher Scientific) according to the manufacturers instructions. Real-time PCR was performed with Mx3000P (Agilent Technologies) using Brilliant III Ultra-Fast SYBR Green QPCR Master Mix (Agilent Technologies). The PCR conditions were 5 min at 95C, followed by 40 cycles of 94C for 15 s and 60C for 30 s. Translation elongation factor 1 (EF1) was used as the internal control for normalization. Data were averaged from three independent experiments.

Ortholog sequences were searched from OrthoDB release 10 (www.orthodb.org/) (37) using D. melanogaster genes as queries. The ortholog groups included Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, D. melanogaster, C. elegans, and six cnidarian species (H. vulgaris, Nematostella vectensis, Exaiptasia pallida, Orbicella faveolata, Stylophora pistillata, and Acropora digitifera). The representative sequences for each ortholog group, including those of H. sapiens, M. musculus, D. melanogaster, and H. vulgaris, were aligned using Muscle implemented in MEGA X (38). The percent identities of a pair of protein sequences were calculated using BLAST (https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi). GO enrichment analysis was performed for differentially expressed Hydra genes that displayed high sequence similarity (sequence identity 40% and e value <0.001) to homologous genes in other model organisms (H. sapiens, M. musculus, and D. melanogaster) using the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) version 6.8 (39, 40).

Hydra was relaxed with 1% urethane and then fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde overnight at 4C. Fixed samples were incubated with digoxigenin (DIG)labeled RNA probes overnight at 55C. After washes in 2 SSC, hybridized RNA probes were detected using alkaline phosphataseconjugated anti-DIG antibody (Roche) and nitro blue tetrazolium/bromochloroindolyl phosphate (NBT/BCIP) solution. Sense probes were used as negative controls. Images were acquired using the digital camera D5200 (Nikon) equipped with Leica MZ10F (Leica).

Hydra was maintained in HCS at 20C under LD cycles and starved for 24 hours before BrdU labeling. Animals were incubated with 5 mM BrdU (Wako) for 12 hours in either L or D phase and then fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde for 4 hours at room temperature (RT). For BrdU labeling in sleep-deprived animals, animals were incubated with 5 mM BrdU for 36 hours in control or sleep-depriving conditions before fixation. After washing with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) containing 0.3% Triton X-100 (PBST), fixed samples were treated with 2 N HCl for 20 min at RT. After washing three times at RT, samples were blocked with 5% normal goat serum in PBST for 30 min at RT. The samples were incubated with anti-BrdU antibody (Roche; 1:200) at 4C overnight and then incubated with anti-mouse Alexa Fluor 488 secondary antibody (Thermo Fisher Scientific; 1:1000) at RT for 1 hour. After washing three times with PBST, samples were mounted in VECTASHIELD Mounting Medium with propidium iodide (Vector Laboratories). Images (3840 3072 pixels) were acquired using the digital camera DXM1200F (Nikon) equipped with the OPTIPHOTO microscope (Nikon). Quantitative image analysis was performed using ImageJ (35). After background subtraction, automatic thresholding was performed in each picture. Significant signals were detected by particle analysis (circularity is 0.2 to 1.0), and the number of particles was recorded. Six regions of interest (ROIs) (800 800 pixels) were randomly selected from each part of a given animal and used for the quantification. The ratio of BrdU-positive nuclei to propidium iodidepositive nuclei was calculated per ROI and normalized to that in each control.

Statistical analysis was performed using Prism (GraphPad Software) or R (version 3.5.3). For the two-sample test, normality and homogeneity of variance were checked by the Shapiro-Wilk normality test and F test, respectively (significance levels are 0.05 in both tests). A two-tailed Students t test or Welchs t test was then applied to compare unpaired two groups with normality. When the normality was rejected, the Mann-Whitney U test was applied. For the multiple comparison test, normality and homogeneity of variance were checked by the Shapiro-Wilk test and Brown-Forsythe test, respectively. To compare unpaired multiple sample groups, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Holm-Sidaks multiple comparisons test or Welchs ANOVA followed by Dunnetts T3 multiple comparisons test were used for the dataset with normality. When the normality was rejected, Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA followed by Dunns post hoc test or Aligned ranks transformation ANOVA followed by the Wilcoxon rank-sum test was applied. To compare paired sample groups, paired t test was applied for the dataset with normality, while Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test or Friedmans test followed by Dunns post hoc test were applied for the dataset violating the assumption of normality. The details of statistical analyses, including the number of samples analyzed, the type of statistical tests performed for each experiment, and P values, were described in the appropriate figure legend.

Acknowledgments: We thank T. Tanimura, A. Matsumoto, K. Tomioka, T. Yoshii, K. Yasuda, and A. Doi for helpful suggestions regarding the experiments and analyses and Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center, Korea Drosophila Resource Center, and National Institute of Genetics for reagents. Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Suh Kyungbae Foundation (SUHF-17020101) (C.L.); the National Research Foundation funded by the Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology (MSIT), Republic of Korea (NRF-2017R1E1A2A02066965; NRF-2018R1A5A1024261) (C.L.); the NRF funded by the MSIT, Republic of Korea (NRF- 2018H1A2A1063084) (J.-h.K.); Qdai-jump Research Program (01292) (T.Q.I.); the Sumitomo Foundation (180788) (T.Q.I.); and JSPS KAKENHI (18 K14749) (T.Q.I.). Author contributions: C.L. and T.Q.I. supervised the study; H.J.K., S.P., J.-h.K., J.K., S.K., J.L., Y.K., C.L., and T.Q.I. designed the experiments; H.J.K., S.P., J.-h.K., J.K., S.K., E.S., A.S., J.L., H.B., and T.Q.I. performed the experiments; H.J.K., S.P., J.-h.K., J.K., S.K., A.S., J.L., C.L., and T.Q.I. analyzed the data; C.L. and T.Q.I. wrote the manuscript with inputs from all other authors. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.

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A sleep-like state in Hydra unravels conserved sleep mechanisms during the evolutionary development of the central nervous system - Science Advances

The evolution of the personal finance industry, and where it is headed – Open Access Government

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Since the turn of the century, technology has played an increasingly significant role in our day to day lives. From smartphones to home assistants to AI chatbots, people are now relying on tech more than ever to simplify or improve all manner of tasks.

The coronavirus pandemic has only accelerated this trend. The rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020 has halted normality and social distancing measures drove consumers from in-person to digital services. As such, 57% of consumers now prefer to use online banking tools to manage their finances; to compare, this figure sat at 49% pre-COVID-19.

The personal finance sector has certainly been no exception. Consumers had already become increasingly reliant on tech to research, compare, invest and manage their finances and even more so over the past six months.

The personal finance industry has come a long way in the past 20 years. This rise of financial technology (fintech) has streamlined many processes for both service providers and their customers. In short, fintech has made the vast, complicated world of personal finances far more accessible to the average consumer.

One of the biggest changes in the personal finance space brought about by tech has been the emergence of and the increasing popularity of comparison websites. These have become the first port of call for a consumer when it comes to considering their options and saving money, for everything from their home insurance to their energy suppliers. Indeed, recent research from the Competition and Markets Authority revealed that 85% of UK consumers have used price comparison websites at some point in their lives.

So, why are comparison websites so popular? In short, they reduce the amount of time needed when searching for financial products, whether that is insurance, mortgages or savings accounts. The online platforms gather all the necessary data and display all of the options in an easy-to-digest format.

Yet the offering has been constantly evolving over the past two decades. With more advanced technologies coming into play in recent years, it is now possible for complex algorithms to make snapshot assessments of risk, better establish an individuals credit score, and rapidly analyse vast amounts of data to return more targeted results. The result is a more tailored, personal service.

The evolution of comparison website has come alongside the rise of digital banking. Whether through established banks or challenger banks, consumers have increasingly turned to online and mobile platforms to manage their finances.

As with other areas of our lives, people today expect services to be available at their fingertips, with minimal fuss or delay.

Slick apps, real-time payments and financial analysis to boot, digital banking tools allow users to always be keyed into their account activity and have made monitoring spending easier than ever. Not only does this help consumers keep an eye on their funds, but it also offers an additional level of security. Indeed, instant access to ones bank transactions makes it far easier to spot fraudulent account activity.

With so much pioneering technology disrupting the industry both when comparing products and managing them consumers are better placed than ever to remain in control of their finances. So, the question is now, what does the future have in store for the personal finance sector?

Traditionally, when consumers think of financial advisers, this might conjure up an image of men in suits. But the future is automated, and such regulated advisers could also take the form of digital chatbots, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) in the coming years.

Although this technology already exists and is currently able to field consumers financial questions, it is still in its infancy. At the moment, bots are just able to provide generic automated advice but bolstered by AI, further disruption to the industry is on the cards.

With such rapid developments, it is becoming increasingly clear that the personal finance sector and certainly the world of financial comparison platforms is heading in one direction: personalisation and consumer empowerment. That is, after all, what the so-called fintech revolution has promised in recent years: greater choice, transparency and hassle-free experiences.

The days of generic advice, off-the-shelf products and long-waiting times to procure a new financial product (open a savings account or take out a new credit card) are over. Quite rightly, one in two consumers believe that financial guidance should be personalised. Whats they expect a wide choice of options when considering personal finance products, and for such products to be customised more to their circumstances. Tech is and will continue to enable this and in an increasingly sophisticated way.

All in all, the future looks bright for the personal finance sector. Consumers increasingly have access to innovative tools they need to navigate complicated decisions and manage their money with ease.

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The evolution of the personal finance industry, and where it is headed - Open Access Government

Viewpoint: Evolution works just look at the ‘success’ of the coronavirus – Genetic Literacy Project

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

The scope and the devastation of the pandemic reflect bad luck, yes, and a dangerous world, yes, but also catastrophic failures of human foresight, communal will and leadership.

But look past that record of human failures for a moment, and consider this whole event from the point of view of the virus. Measure it by the cold logic of evolution: The career of SARS-CoV-2 so far is, in Darwinian terms, a great success story.

This now-notorious coronavirus was once an inconspicuous creature, lurking quietly in its natural host: some population of animals, possibly bats, in the caves and remnant forests of southern China. The existence of such a living hide-out also known as a reservoir host is logically necessary when any new virus appears suddenly as a human infection.

Why? Because everything comes from somewhere, and viruses come from cellular creatures, such as animals, plants or fungi A virus can only replicate itself, function as though it were alive and abide over time if it inhabits the cells of a more complex creature, like a sort of genetic parasite.

Viruses have no malice against us. They have no purposes, no schemes. They follow the same simple Darwinian imperatives as do rats or any other creature driven by a genome: to extend themselves as much as possible in abundance, in geographical space and in time.

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Viewpoint: Evolution works just look at the 'success' of the coronavirus - Genetic Literacy Project

Dietary Supplements | National Institute on Aging

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Bill is retired and lives alone. Often, hes just not hungry or is too tired to fix a whole meal. Does he need a multivitamin, or should he take one of those dietary supplements he sees in ads everywhere? Bill wonders if they workwill one help keep his joints healthy or another give him more energy? And, are they safe?

Dietary supplements are substances you might use to add nutrients to your diet or to lower your risk of health problems, like osteoporosis or arthritis. Dietary supplements come in the form of pills, capsules, powders, gel tabs, extracts, or liquids. They might contain vitamins, minerals, fiber, amino acids, herbs or other plants, or enzymes. Sometimes, the ingredients in dietary supplements are added to foods, including drinks. A doctors prescription is not needed to buy dietary supplements.

Eating a variety of healthy foods is the best way to get the nutrients you need. However, some people dont get enough vitamins and minerals from their daily diet, and their doctors may recommend a supplement. Dietary supplements may provide nutrients that might be missing from your daily diet.

Talk with your doctor before taking any supplements. Some supplements can change how medicines you may already be taking will work. If your doctor recommends a dietary supplement for you, make sure youre getting the brand recommended by the doctor and that you take it as directed.

Do you wonder if you need a dietary supplement? Maybe you do, but usually not. Ask yourself why you think you might want to take a dietary supplement. Are you concerned about getting enough nutrients? Is a friend, a neighbor, or someone on a commercial suggesting you take one? Some ads for dietary supplements in magazines, online, or on TV seem to promise that these supplements will make you feel better, keep you from getting sick, or even help you live longer. Often, there is little, if any, good scientific research supporting these claims. Supplements may cost a lot, could be harmful, or simply might not be helpful. Talk to your doctor or a registered dietitian for advice.

People over age 50 may need more of some vitamins and minerals than younger adults do. Your doctor or a dietitian can tell you whether you need to change your diet or take a vitamin or mineral supplement to get enough of these:

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015-2020 recommend how much of each vitamin and mineral men and women of different ages need. Sometimes, too much of a vitamin or mineral can be harmful. Most, if not all, of your daily vitamins and minerals should come from food.

Vitamin B122.4 mcg (micrograms) each day. If you are taking medicine for acid reflux, you might need a different form, which your healthcare provider can give you.

CalciumWomen over age 50 need 1,200 mg (milligrams) each day. Men need 1,000 mg between age 51 and 70 and 1,200 mg after 70, but not more than 2,000 mg a day.

Vitamin D600 IU (International Units) for people age 51 to 70 and 800 IU for those over 70, but not more than 4,000 IU each day.

Vitamin B61.7 mg for men and 1.5 mg for women each day.

When thinking about whether you need more of a vitamin or mineral, think about how much of each nutrient you get from food and drinks, as well as from any supplements you take. Check with a doctor or dietitian to learn whether you need to supplement your diet.

You might hear about antioxidants in the news. These are natural substances in food that might help protect you from some diseases. Here are some common sources of antioxidants that you should be sure to include in your diet:

Right now, research results suggest that large doses of supplements with antioxidants will not prevent chronic diseases such as heart disease or diabetes. In fact, some studies have shown that taking large doses of some antioxidants could be harmful. Again, it is best to check with your doctor before taking a dietary supplement.

Herbal supplements are dietary supplements that come from plants.

A few that you may have heard of are gingko biloba, ginseng, echinacea, and black cohosh. Researchers are looking at using herbal supplements to prevent or treat some health problems. Its too soon to know if herbal supplements are both safe and useful. But, studies of some have not shown benefits.

Scientists are still working to answer this question. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) checks prescription medicines, such as antibiotics or blood pressure medicines, to make sure they are safe and do what they promise. The same is true for over-the-counter drugs like pain and cold medicines.

The FDA does not have authority over dietary supplements in the same way it does prescription medicines. The Federal Government does not regularly test what is in dietary supplements, and companies are not required to share information on the safety of a dietary supplement with the FDA before they sell it. The companies are responsible for making sure the supplement is safe, but the FDA does not evaluate the safety of the product before the supplement is sold. So, just because you see a dietary supplement on a store shelf does not mean it is safe, that it does what the label says it will, or that it contains what the label says it contains.

If the FDA receives reports of possible problems with a supplement, it will issue warnings about products that are clearly unsafe. The FDA may also take these supplements off the market. The Federal Trade Commission looks into reports of ads that might misrepresent what dietary supplements do. A few private groups, such as the U.S. Pharmacopeia, NSF International, ConsumerLab.com, and the Natural Products Association, have their own seals of approval for dietary supplements. To get such a seal, products must be made by following good manufacturing procedures, must contain what is listed on the label, and must not have harmful levels of ingredients that dont belong there, like lead.

If you are thinking about using dietary supplements:

When she turned 60, Pearl decided she wanted to stay healthy and active as long as possible. She was careful about what she ate. She became more physically active. Now she takes a long, brisk walk three or four times a week. In bad weather, she joins the mall walkers at the local shopping mall. On nice days, Pearl works in her garden. When she was younger, Pearl stopped smoking and started using a seatbelt. Shes even learning how to use a computer to find healthy recipes. Last month, she turned 84 and danced at her granddaughters wedding!

Try following Pearls examplestick to a healthy diet, be physically active, keep your mind active, dont smoke, see your doctor regularly, and, in most cases, only use dietary supplements suggested by your doctor or pharmacist.

Read about this topic in Spanish. Lea sobre este tema en espaol.

Office of Dietary Supplements National Institutes of Health301-435-2920ods@nih.govwww.ods.od.nih.gov

Department of AgricultureFood and Nutrition Information Center301-504-5414FNIC@ars.usda.govwww.nal.usda.gov/fnic

This content is provided by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health. NIA scientists and other experts review this content to ensure that it is accurate, authoritative, and up to date.

Content reviewed: November 30, 2017

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Dietary Supplements | National Institute on Aging

Dietary Supplements: What You Need to Know

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Many adults and children in the United States take one or more vitamins or other dietary supplements. In addition to vitamins, dietary supplements can contain minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, enzymes, and many other ingredients. Dietary supplements come in a variety of forms, including tablets, capsules, gummies, and powders, as well as drinks and energy bars. Popular supplements include vitamins D and B12; minerals like calcium and iron; herbs such as echinacea and garlic; and products like glucosamine, probiotics, and fish oils.

Products sold as dietary supplements come with a Supplement Facts label that lists the active ingredients, the amount per serving (dose), as well as other ingredients, such as fillers, binders, and flavorings. The manufacturer suggests the serving size, but your healthcare provider might decide a different amount is more appropriate for you.

Some dietary supplements can help you get adequate amounts of essential nutrients if you dont eat a nutritious variety of foods. However, supplements cant take the place of the variety of foods that are important to a healthy diet. To learn more about what makes a healthy diet, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and ChooseMyPlateare good sources of information.

Some dietary supplements can improve overall health and help manage some health conditions. For example:

Many other supplements need more study to determine if they have value. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not determine whether dietary supplements are effective before they are marketed.

Many supplements contain active ingredients that can have strong effects in the body. Always be alert to the possibility of a bad reaction, especially when taking a new product.

You are most likely to have side effects from dietary supplements if you take them at high doses or instead of prescribed medicines, or if you take many different supplements. Some supplements can increase the risk of bleeding or, if taken before surgery, can change your response to anesthesia. Supplements can also interact with some medicines in ways that might cause problems. Here are a few examples:

Manufacturers may add vitamins, minerals, and other supplement ingredients to foods you eat, especially breakfast cereals and beverages. As a result, you may get more of these ingredients than you think, and more might not be better. Taking more than you need costs more and might also raise your risk of side effects. For example, too much vitamin A can cause headaches and liver damage, reduce bone strength, and cause birth defects. Excess iron causes nausea and vomiting and may damage the liver and other organs.

Be cautious about taking dietary supplements if you are pregnant or nursing. Also, be careful about giving supplements to a child, unless recommended by their healthcare provider. Many supplements have not been well tested for safety in pregnant women, nursing mothers, or children.

If you think that you have had a bad reaction toa dietary supplement, let your healthcare provider know. He or she may report your experience to the FDA. You may also submit a report directly to the FDA by calling 800-FDA-1088 or completing an online form. You should also report your reaction to the manufacturer by using the contact information on the product label.

The FDA has established good manufacturing practices (GMPs) that companies must follow to help ensure the identity, purity, strength, and composition of their dietary supplements. These GMPs can prevent adding the wrong ingredient (or too much or too little of the correct ingredient) and reduce the chance of contamination or improper packaging and labeling of a product. The FDA periodically inspects facilities that manufacture supplements.

Several independent organizations offer quality testing and allow products that pass these tests to display a seal of quality assurance that indicates the product was properly manufactured, contains the ingredients listed on the label, and does not contain harmful levels of contaminants. These seals do not guarantee that a product is safe or effective. Organizations that offer quality testing include:*

* Any mention of a specific company, organization, or service does not represent an endorsement by ODS.

Tell your healthcare providers (including doctors, dentists,pharmacists, and dietitians) about any dietary supplements youre taking. They can help you determine which supplements, if any, might be valuable for you.

Keep a complete record of any dietary supplements and medicines you take. The Office of Dietary Supplements website hasa useful form, "My Dietary Supplement and Medicine Record," that you can print and fill out at home. For each product, note the name, the dose you take, how often you take it, and the reason for use. You can share this record with your healthcare providers to discuss whats best for your overall health.

Dietary supplements are products intended to supplement the diet. They are not medicines and are not intended to treat, diagnose, mitigate, prevent, or cure diseases. The FDA is the federal agency that oversees both supplements and medicines, but the FDA regulations for dietary supplements are different from those for prescription or over-the-counter medicines.

Medicines must be approved by the FDA before they can be sold or marketed. Supplements do not require this approval. Supplement companies are responsible for having evidence that their products are safe, and the label claims are truthful and not misleading. However, as long as the product does not contain a new dietary ingredient (one introduced since October 15, 1994), the company does not have to provide this safety evidence to the FDA before the product is marketed.

Dietary supplement labels may include certain types of health-related claims. Manufacturers are permitted to say, for example, that a supplement promotes health or supports a body function (like immunity or heart health). These claims must be followed by the words, This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Manufacturers must follow good manufacturing practices (GMPs) to ensure the identity, purity, strength, and composition of their products. If the FDA finds a dietary supplement to be unsafe, it may remove the product from the marketplace or ask the manufacturer to voluntarily recall the product.

The FDA monitors the marketplace for potential illegal products that may be unsafe or make false or misleading claims. The Federal Trade Commission, which monitors product advertising, also requires information about a supplement product to be truthful and not misleading.

The federal government can take legal action against companies and websites that sell dietary supplements when the companies make false or deceptive statements about their products, if they promote them as treatments or cures for diseases, or if their products are unsafe.

NIH supports research and provides educational materials on dietary supplements.

FDAissues rules and regulations and oversees dietary supplement labeling, marketing, and safety. Recall notices are also posted on the FDA webpage or you can subscribe to receive FDA notices of recalls, market withdrawals, and safety alerts.

FTCregulates health and safety claims made in advertising for dietary supplements.

USDAprovides information on a variety of food and nutrition topics.

HHS provideswellness information, personal health tools, and health news.

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Dietary Supplements: What You Need to Know

Industrial Hemp Market by Application (textiles, hemp-based CBD, food and supplements, personal care) and Geography (APAC, North America, Europe,…

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

TipRanks

Markets are on a roller coaster lately, up one day and down the next, as Wall Streets pros and investors alike try to make sense of the constantly shifting news cycle. To wit: In the first week of October, weve seen a pretty good September jobs report, President Trump spend three days at Walter Reed Hospital with a case of COVID-19, and on his discharge the President withdrew from negotiations with House Democrats on a new COVID economic stimulus package. Its enough to make your head spin.Its also enough to send the S&P up 60 points one day and down 60 points the next day. Investors are nervous; no one wants to see another economic tailspin, no one wants to see the Administration handicapped by coronavirus, and whether there will be a stimulus package or not, of $1.6 trillion, or $2.2 trillion, or just $400 billion, Wall Street would simply like to have some idea of whats in the cards.Watching everything from Wells Fargo, senior global market strategist Sameer Samana summed it all up when he wrote, While risks remain, such as election and COVID-19-related uncertainty, we believe investors should continue to remain fully invested and we favor U.S. large- and mid-cap companies, and the Information Technology, Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services, and Healthcare sectors.With Samanas outlook in mind, we took a closer look at three stocks backed by Wells Fargo. Running the tickers throughTipRanks database, we learned that the firm sees at least 70% upside potential in store for each, and all three have earned a Strong Buy consensus rating from the rest of the Street.Northern Oil and Gas (NOG)First up is Northern Oil and Gas, a small-cap oil and gas exploration company operating in the Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana. The companys active plays include wells in the Bakken formation, the region that helped put fracking into the national consciousness. Northerns reserves include 7.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil, and production, at 1.5 million barrels per day, has increased 30% over the past three years.Despite the solid production growth, low prices and low demand during the corona crisis have put damper on 1H20 revenues. Earnings, however, are turning around. EPS was just 5 cents in Q1, but jumped to 20 cents in Q2 and is forecast to hit 38 cents in Q3. Unsurprisingly, these gains come as several states are loosening COVID restrictions and overall consumer demand is increasing.Wells Fargo analyst Thomas Hughes sees the companys sound acquisition plan and adherence to it as the key.As NOG improved its balance sheet and cost structure, the E&P sector moved in the opposite direction, particularly within its primary basin of focus (Williston). After closing a ~$300mm acquisition in 2019, NOG has selectively sought what it describes as Ground Game opportunities, or smaller, bite-size parcels offering near-term CF accretion due to: (1) superior acreage productivity analysis and (2) a better understanding of upcoming development plans. Since 2Q19, these have totaled >$90mm, and NOG is now on the hunt for more. Hughes wrote. The analyst concluded: While a smaller-cap operator, we believe NOGs limited beta to near-term oil price volatility provides strong FCF assurance, while a strong (and improving) balance sheet brings optionality to capitalize in a buyer-short market.To this end, Hughes gives NOG shares an Overweight rating (i.e. Buy) along with a $10 price target. This figure suggests a 90% upside potential from current levels. (To watch Hughes track record, click here)Wall Street agrees with Hughes on the potential here; the analyst consensus rating of Strong Buy comes from a unanimous 5 positive reviews. Shares are priced at $5.30 and have an average price target of $14, giving an impressive upside potential of 166%. (See NOG stock analysis on TipRanks)Bonanza Creek Energy, Inc. (BCEI)Next up is Bonanza Creek, another small-cap oil and gas explorer in the North American energy sector. This one operating in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. Bonanza Creek has active wells in the Wattenberg Field, using fracking and horizontal drilling to extract oil and gas from formations first put into play in the 1970s.During the second quarter, BCEI reported a 40% sequential decline in revenues, to $36 million, and an EPS net loss of $1.87. At the same time, the stock has managed to retain its value; shares are trading now at the same level they were before their corona collapse in early March.The second quarter also saw capital expenditures come in at the low end of guidance, and debt fall to $58 million. The company expects to repay that outstanding balance by years end. That rosy prediction is predicated on meeting annual production guidance which has been raised to the range of 24 to 25 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. For the quarter, sales volume averaged almost 25K barrels of oil equivalent daily.At Wells Fargo, analyst Thomas Hughes is impressed by this companys balance sheet and production opportunities.With a net cash balance expected by YE20 and PDP net of debt underpinning a valuation above where the stock trades, we view BCEI as a rare SMID value opportunity which also benefits from low leverage risk BCEI lacks the scale required to land itself amongst the ranks of Shale 3.0 operators, but in our opinion, this might not necessarily matter given the clear value disconnect an unlevered balance sheet provides significant dry powder to transact in a market ripe with distress-driven opportunities. Until then, non-operated development should help stabilize volumes until higher oil prices (we estimate $45-50/bbl) warrant development of the companys Legacy acreage, Hughes commented.Hughes written opinion supports his Overweight (i.e. Buy) rating and his $33 price target suggests a robust 72% upside in the next 12 months.Overall, BCEIs Strong Buy analyst consensus rating is based on 4 reviews, breaking down to 3 Buys and 1 hold. The stock is selling for $19.16, and its average price target of $31 implies it has room for 61% upside growth ahead of it. (See BCEI stock analysis on TipRanks)Devon Energy (DVN)Devon Energy, the last stock on this Wells Fargo list, is another North American energy play. This mid-cap company operates in mainly in the New Mexico-Texas-Oklahoma area, with some additional operations in Wyoming. As of the end of 2019, Devon held over 1.8 million acres of mineral rights and 10,800 producing well. Net production last year was 323 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day, and reserves totaled 757 million barrel of oil equivalent. Approximately two-thirds of this total is liquids, with the rest as natural gas.Like the other companies above, Devon is struggling with low oil and gas prices, falling revenues, and low earnings. In Q2, revenues fell sequentially from $2.09 billion to just $394 million. EPS dropped into negative territory with an 18-cent per share net loss.But there was good news, too. Devon reported greater operational efficiency in the quarter, pushing total capex down to $203 million for the quarter, a savings of 10%. Oil production in the quarter beat the guidance by 3,000 barrels per day, reaching 153K barrels. But most importantly, the company finished Q2 with no debt maturities until 2025 and $4.7 billion in available liquid assets, including $1.7 billion in cash.Since the second quarter ended, Devon has made two important moves that bode well for future performance. First, Devon completed the sale of its assets in the Barnett Shale, netting $320 million in cash at the closing. And second, the company announced it will enter a merger of equals agreement with competitor WPX energy. The merger is an all-stock deal and will create the largest unconventional oil and gas producer in the US.Analyst Thomas Hughes was impressed by Devons merger, and what that transaction says about the companys overarching plan. Referring to the near-term.Management expects to generate ~$575 million of annual cash flow improvements by YE21 through initiative already underway at Devon (~$300mm) and synergies from the [WPX merger], Hughes wrote. Looking ahead, Hughes sees Devon following a careful plan with a clear goal in mind.We believe the huge portfolio transformation Devon has undergone over the past 5+ years has been an impressive look at how a large-cap, diversified oil producer can pivot its focus. Acknowledging the challenging road Devon has traversed, "New Devon" looks to further focus operations on core parts of U.S. shale by divesting Canadian Oil Sands and Barnett assets (also Rockies CO2). We see the target of "New Devon" as achievable with the remaining U.S. Shale assets being above average, anchored by a strong position in the Delaware. the analyst noted.In line with these comments, Hughes rates DVN as Overweight (i.e. Buy). His $18 price target is indicative of an 106% one-year upside potential. All in all, the 17 recent reviews on DVN include 14 Buys and 3 Holds, supporting the Strong Buy analyst consensus. The stocks average price target of $15.56 implies a 60% upside from the current trading price of $9.75. (See DVN stock analysis at TipRanks)To find good ideas for stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.

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Industrial Hemp Market by Application (textiles, hemp-based CBD, food and supplements, personal care) and Geography (APAC, North America, Europe,...

What to Know About Vitamin D and COVID-19 – Healthline

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

With no coronavirus vaccines approved for full use, many people are turning to vitamins and other supplements to bolster their immune system and help them fight off COVID-19.

While plenty of posts on social media push these supplements as personal coronavirus shields, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautioned last month that most so-called immune boosting supplements actually do nothing.

However, there is one supplement that may be of use to the immune system vitamin D, also known as the sunshine vitamin.

If you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection, Fauci said in an Instagram Live interview with actress Jennifer Garner. So I would not mind recommending and I do it myself taking vitamin D supplements.

Fauci was not speaking about COVID-19 specifically, but about vitamin Ds general role in supporting the immune system in particular, about the benefits of this nutrient for people who are deficient.

Right now, the National Institutes of Health says theres not enough evidence to show that vitamin D can prevent or treat COVID-19.

But there is enough evidence that scientists are exploring the benefits of this and other supplements against the coronavirus.

Earlier research showed that vitamin D reduces the risk of respiratory tract infections other than COVID-19. The benefits varied quite a bit among these studies, but vitamin D supplementation seemed to be more helpful for people who were deficient in this nutrient.

More recent research suggests that vitamin D deficiency may increase the risk of coronavirus infection and severity of COVID-19.

For example, some studies found that COVID-19 deaths tend to be higher in countries farther away from the equator, where many people are deficient in vitamin D due to the reduced amount of sunlight, especially during winter.

We make vitamin D by being exposed to sunlight, and in the colder months people can become deficient, said Nicole Avena, PhD, an assistant professor of neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Many factors could account for the greater number of COVID-19 cases in more northerly latitudes. But a study published last month in JAMA Network Open reinforces the importance of vitamin D for a healthy immune system.

In our study, patients who have lower vitamin D levels were more likely to test positive for COVID-19, said study author Dr. David Meltzer, a professor of medicine at The University of Chicago Medicine.

This trend still held when they tried to control for other factors age, obesity, other medical conditions that might worsen COVID-19 and are linked to lower vitamin D levels.

Other studies show that patients with lower vitamin D levels who are diagnosed with COVID-19 tend to have worse outcomes.

One of these was published last month in PLoS ONE. Researchers found that people hospitalized for COVID-19 who were deficient in vitamin D were more likely to have severe symptoms or die from COVID-19.

Not all research, though, supports the link between vitamin D and COVID-19.

A UK biobank study published earlier this year in Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews found no link between vitamin D levels and coronavirus infection.

However, Meltzer and his colleagues pointed out in their paper that the UK researchers measured vitamin D levels up to 14 years before COVID-19 testing and didnt look at whether people had been treated with vitamin D since then.

This could have weakened the observed link between vitamin D levels and coronavirus infection, they wrote.

Scientists are also eyeing other nutrients as potential treatments for COVID-19, including zinc and vitamin C, both touted for their cold-fighting benefits.

In one study, researchers from Spain reported that patients with low blood levels of zinc were more likely to die from COVID-19.

Their results were presented last week at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease (ESCMID) Conference on Coronavirus Disease. This research has not been peer-reviewed, so it should be viewed with some caution.

All of these studies are observational, meaning researchers collected data on people over time, rather than assigning people to different treatments. That makes it impossible to show a cause-and-effect relationship between vitamin D and COVID-19.

Whats needed are randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the gold standard of clinical research. Some of these are already underway.

In one study carried out in Spain, researchers gave calcifediol, an active form of vitamin D, to 50 people hospitalized with COVID-19. Another group of 26 patients didnt receive vitamin D.

All patients were treated equally with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.

Only one of the patients treated with vitamin D ended up in the intensive care unit, while half of the untreated patients did.

There are some imperfections [to the study] its not a very large study, there are some slight imbalances between the groups but its pretty impressive, said Meltzer.

While this study used vitamin D to treat people who already had COVID-19, Meltzer says the nutrient might work equally well at keeping people out of the hospital.

One possibility is that vitamin D is not preventing COVID-19, he said, but is causing people who are infected to have such minimal symptoms that they never get tested, never get found.

More research is needed to know if this is true.

Two randomized controlled trials starting at the University of Chicago should provide some answers. In both, people will be treated with vitamin D and then followed to see if they contract the coronavirus and how severe their symptoms are.

One trial focuses on healthcare workers. The other will recruit people from the community, with an emphasis on enrolling Black and Hispanic people, who are at high risk for both vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19.

At the Cleveland Clinic, researchers are enrolling people into a study to see if vitamin C or zinc or a combination of the two can reduce the duration of COVID-19 symptoms. Patients will be given the supplements after they have tested positive for COVID-19.

How soon results are available from these studies depends on how quickly researchers can enroll people into the studies. Meltzer says study volunteers are essential for the success of COVID-19 research.

People who can enter clinical trials do a tremendous service to society, he said.

Although Meltzer is enthusiastic about the potential benefits of vitamin D, he cautions that we wont really know until the randomized controlled trials are finished.

This doesnt mean we should let down our guard or not do any of the other things were doing, he said. I certainly wouldnt stop wearing a mask and go to a big party thinking everything was going to be OK because I was taking vitamin D.

Even before these studies are finished, there are good reasons to consider taking a vitamin D supplement.

The vast majority of Americans are vitamin D deficient and could probably benefit from some modest level of vitamin D supplementation, at very little risk, said Meltzer.

In the United States, an estimated 41 percent of adults are deficient in vitamin D. People with darker skin are at greater risk 63 percent of Hispanic people and 82 percent of Black people have low vitamin D levels.

Other factors increase the risk of vitamin D deficiency, including age, limited sun exposure, obesity, and certain medical conditions.

Avena says it is difficult to get enough vitamin D from foods. So taking a supplement may be advised, she says, but always check with your doctor first.

Meltzer says he takes 4,000 international units (IU) per day. The National Institutes of Health says this is the upper limit of what is safe for the vast majority of people.

Dont consume more than 4,000 IU per day of vitamin D without your doctors permission, said Avena. It exceeds the safe upper limits of intake.

Larger doses can be toxic and should only be taken under medical supervision.

Avena says zinc may also be helpful once you feel symptoms of a cold coming on.

She recommends taking between 13.3 milligrams and 23 milligrams of zinc every 2 hours while you have cold symptoms, but no longer than 1 week. This is the dose found in over-the-counter gummies and lozenges.

As with vitamin D, we dont yet know if zinc will reduce symptoms of COVID-19.

While most people get enough zinc from food sources, some groups vegetarians, people with gastrointestinal diseases, people who misuse alcohol are at higher risk of zinc deficiency and might want to consider taking a supplement.

Continued here:

What to Know About Vitamin D and COVID-19 - Healthline

Taking too much vitamin E can cause toxicity here’s how to recognize symptoms and get treatment – Insider – INSIDER

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Vitamin E is a critical nutrient for the body that can be found in foods like sunflower seeds, nuts, and vegetable oils. It plays an important role in expanding blood vessels to prevent dangerous blood clots.

However, vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin, which means it can potentially build up to toxic levels within the body. Here is what you need to know about vitamin E toxicity, including symptoms, causes, and treatment options.

While eating adequate amounts of vitamin E is important to keep your body running smoothly, it is possible to consume too much, resulting in toxicity. According to the National Institutes of Health, your recommended daily vitamin E intake varies by age:

Yuqing Liu/Insider

The upper limit the largest daily intake considered safe for adults is 1,100 mg a day.

There are many foods that are rich in vitamin E, so most people with a healthy diet consume enough from food alone. However, some people like those with diseases that may impact their ability to absorb fat like Crohn's or Celiac may consider supplements.

Although it's possible to have too much vitamin E in your diet, toxicity most often occurs due to unnecessary or excessive supplement use.

"If you are taking a vitamin E supplement [and] you don't have a deficiency of vitamin E, high levels can build up in the body and cause toxicity," says Bansari Acharya, RDN, a registered dietitian-nutritionist in Detroit, Michigan.

Vitamin E toxicity has two stages of symptoms: mild and severe. According to Acharya, mild symptoms of vitamin E toxicity include:

"If a high dose of vitamin E is taken consistently and routinely, you may quickly experience mild symptoms such as GI distress and headaches," says Acharya. Which symptoms present themselves will vary from person to person, she explains, with some people having one to two symptoms and others experiencing most of them at once.

Recognizing the mild symptoms can help you seek treatment before more serious life-threatening, medical complications occur. According to Acharya, these include:

When vitamin E is consistently taken at high doses, severe symptoms can occur within a few days, says Acharya.

Because it is a fat-soluble vitamin, vitamin E is stored in the liver and fatty tissues for long periods of time. This means that the body has a harder time excreting large amounts of vitamin E, increasing the risk of toxicity, says Acharya.

"Vitamin E supplements would be the biggest cause of toxicity side effects," says Lisa Moskovitz, RD, CEO of NY Nutrition Group, a private nutrition practice in New York City.

Moskovitz strongly recommends speaking with a medical professional before taking any vitamin E supplements, cautioning that they can also interfere with certain medications, such as blood thinners.

When it comes to vitamin E supplements, the sentiment is clear: "Without a confirmed deficiency, usually supplementation is not needed, and adequate amounts are usually obtained from the diet, especially in developed countries," says Acharya.

If you notice any sudden or ongoing vitamin E toxicity symptoms such as excessive bleeding or weakness, seek medical help as soon as possible, says Moskovitz. That's because long-term vitamin E toxicity could lead to a hemorrhagic stroke or even death.

When caught early on, reversing vitamin E toxicity is relatively simple if the cause is supplementation.

"The most common way to treat vitamin E toxicity is by discontinuing the supplement and reducing intake of foods in the diet that are high in vitamin E until blood serum levels are within normal limits again," says Acharya. For adults, a normal range is 5.5 mg/L to 17 mg/L.

If severe symptoms such as stroke have already occurred more serious medical intervention may be needed, like a blood transfusion or surgery to repair damaged blood vessels.

Vitamin E can help prevent harmful blood clots, among other health benefits. Adults should consume about 15 mg of vitamin E per day.

However, digesting an excessive amount of vitamin E through foods or supplements can lead to vitamin E toxicity. This condition, while rare, can cause nausea, weakness, and even a hemorrhagic stroke, but is often treatable.

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Taking too much vitamin E can cause toxicity here's how to recognize symptoms and get treatment - Insider - INSIDER

Phycocyanin Market to be $245.5 million by 2027- Exclusive Report Covering Pre and Post COVID-19 Market Analysis by Meticulous Research & EABA -…

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

London, Oct. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to a new market research report titled Phycocyanin Market by Form (Liquid, Powder), by Grade (Food Grade, Cosmetic Grade, Reagent Grade, Analytical Grade) by Application (Food and Beverages, Pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical, Diagnostics and Biomedical), Geography Global Forecast to 2027, published by Meticulous Research in collaboration with the European Algae Biomass Association (EABA), the phycocyanin market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.5% from 2020 to 2027 to reach $245.5 million by 2027.

DownloadFree Sample Report Now @https://www.meticulousresearch.com/download-sample-report/cp_id=5126

Phycocyanin is an important molecule extracted from spirulina with nutritional and therapeutic values. It is one of the key pigments of the algae spirulina, used as a dietary supplement due to its high protein content. PC is a protein from the phycobiliprotein family characterized by its intense blue color and its structure consists of a protein and non-protein components known as phycocyanobilin. It is a water-soluble, natural, and non-toxic molecule with anti-cancer, antioxidant, anti-viral, and anti-inflammatory activities. It is also a powerful agent for the immune system and protects from several diseases.

In recent years, phycocyanin is used as an alternative to synthetic therapeutic and nutritional products. Owing to its non-toxic, eco-friendly & non-carcinogenic nature; additional health-promoting effects like antioxidative and immune-boosting properties; and therapeutic effects such as anti-cancer, anthelminthic, anti-viral & anti-fungal, and anti-inflammatory, phycocyanin is increasingly adopted in the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industry.

Further, the increasing number of clinical research activities on phycocyanin's health benefits have also proven them as a safe and viable replacement for chemically synthesized drugs. The resulting health benefits have provided the means to successfully market phycocyanin to consumers in multi-nutrient supplements or therapeutic agents. Moreover, the increasing consumers concerns for public health, safety, and environmental health are expected to drive the growth of the phycocyanin market for therapeutic and nutritional applications in the future.

The phycocyanin market study presents historical market data in terms of value (2018 and 2019), estimated current data (2020), and forecasts for 2027. The market is segmented based on form, grade, application, and geography. The study also evaluates industry competitors and analyses the market at a country level.

Speak to our Analysts to Understand the Impact of COVID-19 on Your Business:https://www.meticulousresearch.com/speak-to-analyst/cp_id=5126

Impact of COVID-19 on the Phycocyanin Market

The border closures, quarantines, and market supply chain and trade disruptions could restrict peoples access to sufficient/diverse and nutritious food sources, especially in countries hit hard by the virus or already affected by high levels of food insecurity. The worldwide supply chain includes distribution, packaging, as well as sourcing of raw materials. Lockdowns have disrupted the transportation of packaged foods, prepared foods, and non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages. In addition, the shutdowns of restaurants and quick-service facilities due to lockdowns have hindered the growth of the food & beverage industry to a large extent. Nutritious and diverse food sources are in short supply in the wake of the global health crisis. Also, greater food insecurity is prevalent in regions hit hard by COVID-19, such as Spain, Italy, and the U.S. Thus, the negative impact on the global economy, supply chains, and trade are indirectly hampering the growth of the phycocyanin market to some extent.

Based on the form, the powder segment is estimated to command the dominant share of the overall phycocyanin market in 2020. Powder phycocyanin prevents the occurrence of oxidative phenomena and offers a long storage period. In addition, powder breaks down quickly and bids high comfort of digestion in comparison to other forms. Also, powder allows active nutrient delivery and offers high flexibility with dosing.

Based on grade, the overall phycocyanin market is mainly segmented into food grade, cosmetic grade, reagent grade, and analytical grade. The food grade segment is estimated to command the largest share and fast growth of the overall phycocyanin market in 2020. The large share of this segment is mainly attributed to the rising demand for phycocyanin as an alternative for synthetic color, clean labels forcing brands to switch to natural colors, and stringent regulations against synthetic colors.

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Based on application, the food and beverage segment is estimated to command the largest share of the overall phycocyanin market in 2020. The large share of this segment is mainly attributed to growing consumer preference towards ready to drink beverages, growing awareness about health issues associated with the use of synthetic colorants in soft drinks, and the trend of replacing artificial colorants with natural ones. In addition, the growing demand for protein-enhanced drinks boosts the demand for phycocyanin in the food and beverage application.

Geographically, Europe is estimated to command the largest share of the overall phycocyanin market in 2020. The leading position of Europe in the phycocyanin market is primarily attributed to the growth of the scientific and technological development in the field of micro-algae research for various health foods and dietary supplements, growing awareness among consumers for natural food products, and increasing food safety concerns and stringent government regulations. Additionally, the adoption of natural colors from algae is likely to embrace the growing demand for phycocyanin.

The key players operating in the global phycocyanin market are Earthrise Nutritionals, LLC (U.S.), Yunnan Green A Biological Project Co., Ltd (China), Zhejiang Binmei Biotechnology Co., Ltd (China), Fuqing King Dnarmsa Spirulina Co. Ltd. (China), Tianjin Norland Biotech Co., Ltd (China), Bluetec Naturals Co., Ltd (China), BlueBioTech Int. GmbH (Germany), Dongtai City Spirulina Bio-engineering Co., Ltd. (China), Parry Nutraceuticals (India), Japan Algae Co., Ltd. (Japan), Qingdao ZolanBio Co., Ltd. (China), AlgoSource (France), D.D. Williamson & Co., Inc. (U.S.), Wellisen Nutraceuticals (India), Chr Hansen Holding A/S (Denmark), Sensient Technologies Corporation (U.S.), Naturex (France), GNT Group (The Netherlands), Phyco-Biotech Laboratories (France), and Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (U.S.) among others.

To gain more insights into the market with a detailed table of content and figures, click here:https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/phycocyanin-market-5126/

Scope of the report :

Phycocyanin Market, by Form

Phycocyanin Market, by Grade

Phycocyanin Market, by Application

Phycocyanin Market,by Geography

DownloadFree Sample Report Now @https://www.meticulousresearch.com/download-sample-report/cp_id=5126

Amidst this crisis, Meticulous Researchis continuously assessing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on various sub-markets and enables global organizations to strategize for the post-COVID-19 world and sustain their growth. Let us know if you would like to assess the impact of COVID-19 on any industry here-https://www.meticulousresearch.com/custom-research.php

Related Reports:

Spirulina Market by Distribution Channel (Consumer Channel, Business Channel), Product Type (Powder, Tablets, Capsules, Flakes, Phycocyanin Extract), and Application (Nutraceuticals, Food and Beverages, Agriculture, Animal Feed) - Global Forecast to 2025

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/spirulina-market-5070/

Algal Pigments Market by Type (Beta Carotene, Astaxanthin, Fucoxanthin, Phycocyanin, Phycoerythrin), Application (Food and Beverages, Nutraceuticals, Aquaculture, Cosmetics, Pharmaceuticals), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025

https://www.meticulousresearch.com/product/algal-pigments-market-5059/

About Meticulous Research

Meticulous Research was founded in 2010 and incorporated as Meticulous Market Research Pvt. Ltd. in 2013 as a private limited company under the Companies Act, 1956. Since its incorporation, the company has become the leading provider of premium market intelligence in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.

The name of our company defines our services, strengths, and values. Since the inception, we have only thrived to research, analyze and present the critical market data with great attention to details. With the meticulous primary and secondary research techniques, we have built strong capabilities in data collection, interpretation, and analysis of data including qualitative and quantitative research with the finest team of analysts. We design our meticulously analyzed intelligent and value-driven syndicate market research reports, custom studies, quick turnaround research, and consulting solutions to address business challenges of sustainable growth.

Contact:Mr. Khushal BombeMeticulous ResearchDirect Lines: +1-646-781-8004 (North America)+44-203-868-8738 (Europe)+91 744-7780008 (Asia-Pacific)Email- sales@meticulousresearch.comVisit Our Website: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/Connect with us on LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/meticulous-researchContent Source: https://www.meticulousresearch.com/press-release/phycocyanin-market-2027/485

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Phycocyanin Market to be $245.5 million by 2027- Exclusive Report Covering Pre and Post COVID-19 Market Analysis by Meticulous Research & EABA -...

Introducing Beauty By DL, a New Line of Scientifically-Formulated Beauty Supplements by Atrium Innovations – PRNewswire

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Beauty By DL supplement line is committed to staying at the forefront of new research where science and beauty intersect

All products are formulated with innovative ingredients backed by clinical science to help clarify skin, fortify hair and strengthen nails from within.

"The Beauty By DL product line was developed out of the belief that There's Science in Beauty", says Dawn Setlock, Chief Marketing Officer for Atrium Innovations Professional Brands. "As a company, we are committed to staying at the forefront of new research where science and beauty intersect."

In a recent survey of beauty and skincare professionals at medispas, 84% of respondents stated they would like to sell more beauty supplements through their in-office locations and their websites. "We saw the need for high-quality, clinically-backed beauty supplements that you can trust. That is why we have carefully cultivated this new innovative product line," adds Setlock.

To learn more about Beauty By DL line of supplements, visit the new website and follow their page on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

About Beauty By DL

The ground-breaking formulations that make up the Beauty By DL supplement line are part of a carefully cultivated collection with clinically-researched ingredients. The full range of Beauty By DL beauty supplements can help clarify skin, fortify hair and strengthen nails from within, both safely and effectively solidifying the brand's core philosophy for every product in its line - There's Science in Beauty.

About Atrium Innovations Professional Brands

Atrium Innovations is a recognized innovative leader in the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of science-based nutritional and supplement health products. The company's mission is to be a global leader in vitamins, minerals and supplements, offering science-based nutritional solutions through healthcare professionals. Atrium Innovations Professional brands include Pure Encapsulations, Douglas Laboratories, Genestra Brands, Klean Athlete, and Wobenzym.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

Media Contact: Deirdra DelioRLA Collective, A Ruder Finn Company[emailprotected] 914-490-1848

SOURCE Atrium Innovations

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Introducing Beauty By DL, a New Line of Scientifically-Formulated Beauty Supplements by Atrium Innovations - PRNewswire

Why Every Vegan Needs to Take Vitamin B12 Supplement – Greener Ideal

Posted on October 8, 2020 by Danzig

Vegan diets are becoming popular across the world, especially in developed countries. While a well-rounded vegan diet may be a healthier option than a traditional diet, it is a real concern whether a vegan person gets all the sufficient nutrients entirely from a plant-based diet.

For most nutrients, the answer is yes! But there are some that you may be missing out on.

Several vegan alternatives are available in the market, including soy and almond alternatives for animal milk and protein-rich plant-based foods such as tofu and seitan, derived from wheat and soy.

While most of the nutrients of a carnivorous diet have been replaced with plant-based alternatives, some are yet to have an adequate replacement that is entirely natural and plant-based.

Vitamin B12 is the only vitamin absent in entirely plant-based diets

B12 is the only vitamin absent in entirely plant-based diets, unless it includes plant-based foods that have vitamin B12 artificially added to them. As a result, people on vegan diets and children who breastfeed from vegan mothers are often susceptible to vitamin B12 deficiency.

Vitamin B12 is a naturally occurring vitamin that is usually produced by microorganisms. This vitamin plays a crucial part in maintaining the nervous system and blood cells of our body.

Nerve damage is a serious consequence of long term vitamin B12 deficiency

Nerve damage is one of the more permanent consequences of long term vitamin B12 deficiency. Vitamin B12 helps in maintaining the nervous system and helps rebuild DNA in cells.

Low levels of vitamin B12 can cause the nervous system to degenerate. Some of the first symptoms include prickly sensation on the palms; long term effects could include paralysis.

Due to our increasingly sanitized way of life, we usually end up cleansing bacteria off most of our food items. The most common source of bacteria currently is the surface of meat that we intake. Vitamin B12 is separated from the protein with the help of hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

As a result, people who are not on vegetarian or vegan diets get their B12 vitamin from the bacteria that are present on the meat. The bacteria in our large intestine also produce B12, but since the small intestine primarily absorbs this vitamin, it fails to get into the system.

The best way to avoid a Vitamin B12 deficiency is to keep track of your nutrient intake.

The vegan lifestyle is not yet mainstream, which means that, unlike people who follow a non-vegan diet, you will not have the luxury of relying entirely on common knowledge when it comes to your diet.

Vitamin B12 supplements are easy to manage, too, since they only need to be taken once or twice per week, or daily depending on your necessary intake. One aspect of vitamin supplements to be careful of is that some can have animal-based ingredients against a vegan lifestyle.

However, vegan options are available; cyanocobalamin is a commonly preferred vitamin B12 supplement among vegans.

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Why Every Vegan Needs to Take Vitamin B12 Supplement - Greener Ideal

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