BBC News | Indonesia counts its islands to protect territory and resources - BBC ... BBC News The world's largest archipelago hopes identifying all its islands will help protect its resources. |
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Indonesia counts its islands to protect territory and resources - BBC ... - BBC News
VENTURA A project to rehabilitate a 19th century ranch house on one of the Channel Islands off Southern California has led to the discovery of another ancient Native American site in the archipelago, the National Park Service said Tuesday.
Archaeologists discovered stone tools representative of early North American Paleoindians when the main house at the historic Vail & Vicker Ranch on Santa Rosa Island was lifted for construction of a new foundation.
The tools, described as barbed points and crescents, were used for hunting and fishing in the islands, five of which comprise Channel Islands National Park.
The northern Channel Islands have one of the largest and most significant clusters of early coastal sites in the Americas with more than 100 sites over 7,500 years old, Jon Erlandson, a University of Oregon expert on ancient coastal archaeology, said in a statement. We suspect the site is at least 10,000 years old, with evidence of some of the earliest people on the West Coast, the first Americans.
Scientists believe the ancient sites may be evidence of a coastal migration around the North Pacific Rim from northeast Asia to the Americas, the park service said.
Santa Rosa Island is also the site of the 1959 discovery of the so-called Arlington Man, human remains that were subsequently dated to 13,000 years ago and may be the oldest found in North America.
The house where the newly discovered tools were found was constructed sometime after 1869 on a sheep and cattle ranch that operated for more than 150 years.
The rehabilitation, which will turn it into island visitor lodging, has been suspended for the archaeological investigation in conjunction with the Chumash people, Native Americans who historically lived along the central and southern coast of California and on several of the Channel Islands.
Test excavations are being made near the ranch house to determine the extent of ancient deposits.
Channel Islands National Park is headquartered on the mainland in Ventura, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Santa Rosa is the second-largest of the islands, stretching nearly 15 miles (24 kilometers) long and 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide.
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On the internet: https://www.nps.gov/chis/index.htm
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'10,000-year-old' Native American site found on California island - The Mercury News
Indonesia Hopes To Get Exact Count Of Its Islands NPR Indonesia has so many islands that it has never been able to fully count or name them. But the government is now hoping to get a definite number in time for a United Nations meeting in August. Facebook; Twitter. Google+. Email ... |
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The sixth annual Jerusalem Design Weekwill take place June 8 to 15, 2017, across multiple venues in Jerusalems Talbiyeh neighborhood.
More than 150 Israeli and international designers will participate in 40 exhibitions and projects set up in Hansen House Center for Design, Media and Technology; the Natural History Museum; the Museum of Islamic Art; and the Bezeq telephone companys large industrial complex. Popup coffee shops and picnic areas will be opened at all the venues.
Public exhibitions, street performances, music and live shows will kick off Jerusalem Design Week on the evening of June 8, between 7:30 and 11. On Saturday, a childrens island will open on the lawn of Hansen House, where Hakaron Theater will lead workshops and family activities.
Hansen House photo via Facebook
The main exhibition at Bezeq, Islands, explores Jerusalems social, cultural and political role in light of the Western worlds isolationist trend that conflicts with the utopian concept of the global village.
The 40 works in the Islands exhibit were created by five Israeli designers teamed up with five designers from Europe.
For example, Jonathan Hope and Peter Orntoft made a 3D model of a glacier in Antarctica that is separating from the mainland and transforming into an island. Erez Nabi Pena and Marlne Huissoud created a string wall that is dipped in wax and lights up momentarily, meant to evoke walls around the world.
A Fashion Design Island will include a huge wardrobe installation with about 100 different versions of a jacket, some of which will be worn by participants in Design Week, and some for visitors to try on.
Itai Ohalys Product Design Island will function as a dynamic interactive display space where new objects will be created for visitors to Jerusalem Design Week. Photo: courtesy
Hadassah College Jerusalem will present Cultural Islands: Local Interpretation of the Tree Cultures of Japan, Africa and the United States, focusing on woodworking techniques common in those areas.
Every evening at Hansen Cinema, international design films will be screened alongside local films. In the attic of Hansen House, a popup store will offer event-themed merchandise and a selection of products from the participating designers.
This crayon carpet made by the Dutch Mu Gallery in Eindhoven with the Jerusalem Grotesca Studio, is on display at Jerusalem Design Week. Photo by Boudewijn Bollmann
The Jerusalem Design Cooperative encompassing eight local designers from the disciplines of illustration, industrial design, ceramics, glass, textiles and fashion will change and redesign the appearance of local storefronts along Aza Street during the week of the show.
In conjunction with Jerusalem Design Week, special design tours are planned at the Israel Museum and Museum of Islamic Art.
Jerusalem Design Week is the flagship project of the Hansen House and is made possible by the Jerusalem Development Authority in cooperation with the Jerusalem Ministry of Affairs & Heritage and Jerusalem Municipality.
An information and visitor center will be set up at Hansen House, 14 Gedalyah Alon Street.
For more information, click here.
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A Chinese carrier group in the South China Sea / Getty Images
BY: Bill Gertz June 7, 2017 5:00 am
China is militarizing disputed islands in the South China Sea and is using non-military coercion in a bid to control strategic waters in Asia, the Pentagon said in its latest annual report on the Chinese military.
"China continues to exercise low-intensity coercion to advance its claims in the East and South China Seas," the report to Congress says, adding that Beijing's tactic involves the use of "timed progression of incremental but intensifying steps to attempt to increase effective control over disputed areas and avoid escalation to military conflict."
Throughout the South China Sea, China is moving ahead with building military facilities on some of the 3,200 acres of islands dredged from the sea floor and appears headed for a major force of jet fighters.
The island buildup has included major construction on larger islands with runways of 8,800 feet or longer, enough to handle troop transports and other warplanes. Other features include new port facilities,and water and fuel storage in the Spratlys, a string of islands claimed by Philippines and several other regional states.
The new militarization has focused on three reclaimed islandsFiery Cross, Subi, and Mischief Reefswhere small facilities were built last year.
"As of late 2016, China was constructing 24 fighter-sized hangars, fixed-weapons positions, barracks, administration buildings, and communication facilities at each of the three outposts," the report said.
"Once all these facilities are complete, China will have the capacity to house up to three regiments of fighters in the Spratly Islands," the study says
Other facilities have been built on four small islets, Johnson, Gaven, Hughes, and Cuarteron Reefs.
Beginning in early 2016, China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) installed fixed, land-based naval guns on each outpost and bolstered communications infrastructure on the reefs.
The report challenged Beijing's claim that the buildup is defensive and designed to improve working conditions on the outpost.
Instead, the goal of the PLA appears to be "attempting to bolster its de facto control by improving its military and civilian infrastructure in the South China Sea."
"The airfields, berthing areas, and resupply facilities on its Spratly outposts will allow China to maintain a more flexible and persistent coast guard and military presence in the area," the report says.
Satellite photographs of the islands showed deployments of fixed-weapon positions and communications facilities.
A defense official said the weapons emplacements are a concern. The positions are currently equipped with short-range naval guns, but intelligence analysis indicates the same positions can be upgraded easily to handle longer-range anti-ship missiles.
The facilities when fully militarized will give China sufficient powermainly through PLA navy, maritime militia, and coast guard forcesto detect and counter activities by rival claimants and reduce the time needed to respond to rival naval and air activities.
A Navy destroyer conducted a freedom of navigation operation near one of the reefs last month and more are expected. China protested the exercise near Mischief Reef.
China's maritime claims in the South China Sea were rejected last year by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration. However, Beijing rejected the court ruling and continues to assert sovereignty over some 90 percent of the sea.
On the use of coercion, the report noted that China engages in punitive trade policies and other measures to deter opposition to its actions.
After the court ruling in July, China surged the numbers of coast guard, maritime militia, and fishing vessels around various disputed islands.
Chinese leaders are employing information warfare tactics short of armed conflict to advance strategic interests. "This approach seeks to enhance Chinas influence through activities calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking the United States, its allies and partners, or others in the Asia-Pacific region into open conflict," the report said. "This is particularly evident in Chinas pursuit of its territorial and maritime sovereignty claims in the South and East China Seas."
The programs seeking maritime hegemony have prompted regional concerns over China's long-term intentions, the report said.
In the East China Sea, China is claiming Japan's Senkaku Islands that are also claimed by Taiwan.
The United States recognizes Japan's administration of the Senkakus and has invoked Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan defense treaty, meaning the U.S. military would defend the islands from any Chinese attempt to take them over, the report said.
China last year continued to conduct maritime militia ship and aircraft in patrols near those islands.
China's military regards information operationslegal, political, and psychological warfareas "essential" to countering enemies from intervening by controlling the information spectrum in the battlespace, the report said.
The PLA plans to use information blockades and information dominance to advance its military objective in war.
"Chinas information blockade' concept likely envisions the employment of military and non-military instruments of state power across the battlespace, including in cyberspace and space," the report said.
Similarly, China plans to use cyber attacks in a future conflict in order to achieve "cyberspace superiority" using offensive cyber attacks against forces that would degrade enemy military operations against China.
This year's annual Pentagon report, based on Defense Intelligence Agency reporting, is about 50 pages shorter than the 2016 report.
Rick Fisher, a China military affairs analyst, said the latest report provides new details on PLA doctrinal and organizational reforms.
"Today there is palpable anxiety in Washington and among U.S. allies that the Trump administration's China policy may fail to truly defend American interests in the same manner of the failures of the Obama administration," said Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
The Trump administration "needs to tell the real truth about China's global military ambitions and tell the truth about China's longstanding support for nuclear terrorism in North Korea, Iran, and by possible Islamist crisis in Pakistan," he added.
"In order to defend against current and future Chinese threats, what the world needs the most are real facts about the state and projection of that threat," he said.
The latest report provides new details of China's missile defense development, systems similar to the U.S. missile defenses deployed in South Korea that Beijing is opposing.
In addition to Chinese regional military encroachment, Beijing also is expanding its power projection capabilities through setting up overseas bases far from China's coasts. For example, in February 2016, the Chinese began construction of a military base at Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa.
Other Chinese "far seas" bases are expected to be built in what the Pentagon said was an indication China's military leaders plan to conduct operations in Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Atlantic Ocean.
"A more robust overseas logistics and basing infrastructure would also be essential to enable China to project and sustain military power at greater distances from China," the report said.
The report also warned about China's growing space warfare capabilities.
"Chinas space program continues to mature rapidly," it states. "China also continues to develop a variety of counterspace capabilities designed to degrade and deny the use of space-based assets by adversaries during a crisis or conflict."
Most of China's space warfare programs remain secret since the 2007 anti-satellite blast in space created thousands of pieces of space debris floating in orbit.
On other issues, the report highlighted China's growing military capabilities that include deployment of new intermediate-range missiles, the DF-26, which is capable of hitting Guam, a key U.S. military hub in the Pacific.
The PLA is the largest military in the world with 850,000 active duty troops that is undergoing a major restructuring and high-technology weapons modernization.
The Pentagon for the first time provided new details of a new PLA component called the Strategic Support Force that consolidated intelligence, cyber, space, and electronic warfare forces. The unit is part of China's effort to prepare for future high-tech warfare against the United States.
Data on the strategic force is limited but its military space and cyber forces are part of plans to conduct attacks in space and cyber space in a future conflict.
Cyber warfare also remains a Chinese military priority. The new support force "may represent the first step in developing a cyber force that creates efficiencies by combining cyber reconnaissance, attack, and defense capabilities into one organization," the report said.
Chinese nuclear forces also are expanding with the addition of nuclear powered missile and attack submarines, several new missiles, including systems with multiple warheads, and a new strategic bomber.
Missile forces are increasing in number, lethality, and survivability with road-mobile systems. Current nuclear missiles include between 75 and 100 intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.
Beijing's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) forces also are expanding, with five new drones shown in public for the first time last year, the Wing Loong I, Wing Loong II, WJ-600A/D, Yunying Cloud Shadow, and the CH-5 (Rainbow 5).
"The CH-5 is Chinas most heavily armed UAV to date, with the capacity to carry 16 air-to-surface munitions," the report said. "In the last two years, the PLA has also unveiled an armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance UAV, Gongji 1, and has deployed UAVs to the South China Sea."
The Dong Feng-31A has a range of more than 7,000 miles and "can reach most locations within the continental United States," the report said.
Most of China's military modernization has been supported by theft of foreign military technology. Targeted technology includes aircraft engines, tanks, and naval vessels; solid-state electronics and microprocessors; and guidance and control systems. The technology is used by China for reverse engineering for its weapons and other systems.
The latest report said the military balance across the Taiwan Strait has grown more unbalanced in favor of China's military.
"Chinas multi-decade military modernization effort has eroded or negated many of Taiwans historical advantages in deterring PLA aggression, such as the PLAs inability to project sufficient power across the Taiwan Strait, the Taiwan militarys technological superiority, and the inherent geographic advantages of island defense," the report said.
Recent Taiwanese military improvements only marginally addressed the imbalance.
The Trump administration has put off a $1 billion arms sale to Taiwan over concerns the transfer would upset relations with China that has promised to try and rein in North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
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Pentagon: China Militarizing Disputed Islands in Bid to Control Asian Seas - Washington Free Beacon
Indonesia can boast that it is the worlds largest archipelago, but when it gets down to the numbers, details are a little vague.Its estimated to have 17,508 islands, of which around 8,000 are inhabited but no-one knows for sure, so this year the Southeast Asian nation that stretches to 300 miles off the coast of northern Australia has set out to count them all.
The goal is to register Indonesias islands with the U.N., which will guarantee protection for inhabitants living on the smaller islands. Indonesias aim is to secure territory and resources to support a rapidly-growing population. But as the worlds seventh largest country by sea and land mass, Jakarta, Indonesias capital, has its work cut out.
As competition for territory across the region ratchets up, Indonesia has decided its high time to figure out just how many islands fall under its sovereignty.
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Its not so easy. It can take up to six days to get to some of these faraway islands and then many people disagree on the name. Traditionally, it might have been called X but the people who live there call it Y and the nearby fishermen call it Z. Brahmantya Satyamurti Poerwadi, head of the spatial management department at the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, told the FT.
If an island is named by two locals then its name can be recognized officially, according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).
Indonesia is a nation of more than 300 languages and tribes, providing a challenge for a cohesive, centralized government to manage. Some islands in the archipelago have sunk or disappeared over time, while others have been gifted to neighbors: During a territorial dispute in 2002 Indonesia gave Malaysia two islands.
Cataloging islands would help prevent future conflicts over land in an increasingly tense maritime region. The survey will be carried out for the remainder of 2017.
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Indonesia is Counting All of Its Islands to Make Sure It Hasn't ... - Newsweek
June 7, 2017 The structure of the EcoCity model. Credit: Dr. KUANG Wenhui
Urban land-use/cover changes and their effects on the eco-environment have long been an active research topic in the urbanization field. Prof. KUANG Wenhui's group at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed the EcoCity model for regulating urban land cover structures and thermal environments, and has established eco-regulation thresholds for urban surface thermal environments.
This research has shown that the difference in thermal environments among urban functional areas is closely related to the proportion of land-cover components. This work was published in Science China Earth Sciences.
The EcoCity model is based on the multidisciplinary integration of urban geography, urban climatology and urban ecology. The model is closely linked to "spatial location theory" in urban geography, "radiation and energy balance" in urban climatology, and provided the parameterization program for regulating land-cover components and thermal environment in urban planning and management application.
The EcoCity model can simulate the future urban expansion under different scenarios and predict the proportions of urban impervious surface areas and greenness, and the induced urban heat island effect. The core function of this model is spatially explicated information acquisition, including the proportion of impervious surface areas in different functional zones, the intensity of the urban heat island, and the indexes of human comfort.
The results provide fundamental data for regulating the impervious surface ratios in different functional zones and supporting urban heat island mitigation in future urban expansion.
Using Beijing as a study area, the researchers found significantly different surface temperatures in different functional zones, especially between urban impervious surfaces and green space. What's more, the temperatures in various surface covers were different.
"The difference in thermal environments among various urban functional zones is closely related to the composition of major land covers," said Prof. KUANG.
"The analysis of ecological thresholds of impervious surfaces and green space within various functional zones shows their different roles in thermal regulation effects. The urban-rural frontier and urban interior structure are characterized by high dynamics, structural complexity, and land-cover mosaics, resulting in challenges in obtaining accurate results for urban land cover components."
The EcoCity model and associated high-precision data and map products have been applied in different fields such as environmental protection, urban planning, and earthquake recovery.
Explore further: New Hampshire leads nation in percent tree cover
More information: WenHui Kuang et al, An EcoCity model for regulating urban land cover structure and thermal environment: Taking Beijing as an example, Science China Earth Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s11430-016-9032-9
Tree cover in the nation's Lower 48 states covers 659 million acres, more than one-third of the nation, according to a U.S. Forest Service study of national tree cover and impervious surfaces. New Hampshire leads the nation ...
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Researchers develop new EcoCity model for mitigating urban heat islands - Phys.Org
A biology professor has claimed that the mass trauma of Donald Trumps presidency will bring about permanent changes to the human genome.
Peter Ward, an academic at the University of Washington, predicted an evolutionary consequence because of the stress Trumps term in the White House is causing the American population.
He asserted that the process by which human genetics could change is analogous to post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers or the the victims of domestic abuse.
The unconventional view came in a discussion of human capacity to mutate with the science blog (andGawker offshott)Gizmodo.
Ward was one of seven academics asked to bring their expertise to bear on the question of whether and how X-Men-stylesuperhuman mutants could develop.
After speculating about using gene therapy to develop super-soldiers, Ward went on to posit that permanent genetic changes canoccur as a result of horrendous episodes people go through.
He was not asked about Trump, but brought him up as an example, alongside combat trauma and violence at home:
Were finding more and more that, for instance, people who have gone through combat, or women who have been abusedwhen you have these horrendous episodes in life, it causes permanent change, which is then passed on to your kids. These are actual genetic shifts that are taking place within people. Its called epigenetics, and that too can cause huge evolutionary change.
On a larger scale, the amount of stress that Americans are going through now, because of Trumpthere is going to be an evolutionary consequence.
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Biology Prof: Trump Presidency Is So Traumatic It Will Change Human Genome Forever - Heat Street
According to the textbooks, all humans living today descended from a population that lived in east Africa around 200,000 years ago. This is based on reliable evidence, including genetic analyses of people from around the globe and fossil finds from Ethiopia of human-like skeletal remains from 195,000165,000 years ago.
Now a large scientific team that I was part of has discovered new fossil bones and stone tools that challenge this view. The new studies,published in Nature, push back the origins of our species by 100,000 years and suggest that early humans likely spanned across most of the African continent at the time.
Across the globe and throughout history, humans have been interested in understanding their originsboth biological and cultural. Archaeological excavations and the artefacts they recover shed light on complex behaviourssuch as tool making, symbolically burying the dead or making art. When it comes to understanding our biological origins, there are two primary sources of evidence: fossil bones and teeth. More recently, ancient genetic material such as DNA is also offering important insights.
The findings come from the Moroccan site ofJebel Irhoud, which has been well known since the 1960s for its human fossils and sophisticated stone tools. However, the interpretation of the Irhoud fossils has long been complicated by persistent uncertainties surrounding their geological age. In 2004, evolutionary anthropologistsJean-Jacques Hublin andAbdelouahed Ben-Ncerbegan a new excavation project there. They recovered stone tools and newHomo sapiensfossils from at least five individualsprimarily pieces of skull, jaw, teeth and some limb bones.
To provide a precise date for these finds, geochronologists on the team used athermoluminescence dating methodon the stone tools found at the site. When ancient tools are buried, radiation begins to accumulate from the surrounding sediments. Whey they are heated, this radiation is removed. We can therefore measure accumulated radiation to determine how long ago the tools were buried. This analysis indicated that the tools were about 315,000 years old, give or take 34,000 years.
Researchers also appliedelectron spin resonance dating, which is a similar technique but in this case the measurements are made on teeth. Using data on the radiation dose, the age of one tooth in one of the human jaws was estimated to be 286,000 years old, with a margin of error of 32,000 years. Taken together, these methods indicate thatHomo Sapiensmodern humanslived in the far northwestern corner of the African continent much earlier than previously known.
But how can one be sure that these fossils belonged to a member of our species rather than some older ancestor? To address this question, the anatomists on the team used high-resolutioncomputed tomography(CAT scans) to produce detailed digital copies of the precious and fragile fossils.
They then used virtual techniques to reconstruct the face, brain case and lower jaw of this groupand applied sophisticated measurement techniques to determine that these fossils possessed modern human-like facial morphology. In this way, they could be distinguished from all other fossil human species known to be in Africa at the time.
The high-resolution scans were also used to analyse hidden structures within the tooth crowns, as well as the size and shape of the tooth roots hidden within the jaws. These analyses, which were the focus of my contribution, revealed a number of dental characteristics that are similar to other early fossil modern humans.
And although more primitive than the teeth of modern humans today, they are indeed clearly different from, for example,Homo heidelbergensisandHomo neanderthalensis. The discovery and scientific analyses confirm the importance of Jebel Irhoud as the oldest site documenting an early stage of the origin of our species.
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As a palaeoanthropologist who focuses on the study of fossil bones and teeth, I am often asked why we dont simply address thesequestions of human origins using genetic analyses. There are two main reasons for this. Although incredibly exciting advances have been made in the recovery and analysis of genetic material from fossils that are several hundreds of thousands of years old, it seems that this is only likely to be possible under particular (and unfortunately rare) conditions of burial and fossilisation, such as a low and stable temperature.
That means there are fossils we may never be able to get genetic data from and we must rely on analyses of their morphology, as we do for other very interesting questions related to the earliest periods of human evolutionary history.
Also, understanding the genetic basis of our anatomy only tells us a small part of what it means to be human. Understanding, for example, how behaviour during our lives can alter the external and internal structure of hand bones can help reveal how we used our hands to make tools. Similarly, measuring the chemical composition and the cellular structure of our teeth can tell us what we were eating and our rate of development during childhood. It is these types of factors that help us really understand in what ways you and I are both similar and different to the first members of our species.
And of course, we should not forget that it is the archaeological record that is identifying when we started to make art, adorn our bodies with jewellery, make sophisticated tools and access a diverse range of plant and animal resources. There have been some intriguing suggestions that human species even older thanHomo sapiensmay have displayed some of these amazing behaviours.
More such research will reveal how unique we actually are in the evolutionary history of our lineage. So lets encourage a new generation of young scientists to go in search of new fossils and archaeological discoveries that will finally help us crack the puzzle of human evolution once and for all.
Matthew Skinner, Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Kent
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The Science Behind the Discovery of the Oldest Homo Sapien - Smithsonian
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June 7, 2017 by Claire Conway Zev Gartner is growing breast organoids with precise ratios of normal and tumor cells (shown at left) to understand how cell-cell interactions contribute to tumor growth. Credit: Photo by Elisabeth Fall, Cell Image by Gartner Lab
Ophir Klein is growing teeth, which is just slightly less odd than what Jeffrey Bush is growing tissues that make up the face. Jason Pomerantz is growing muscle; Sarah Knox is growing salivary glands; and Edward Hsiao is printing 3-D bone using a machine that looks about as complex as a clock radio.
Together, these members of the UC San Francisco faculty are cultivating organs of the craniofacial complex the skull and face which too often go terribly wrong during fetal development. Deformities of these bones or soft tissues, the most common of birth defects, can cut life short by blocking the airway or circulation. Or they can disfigure a face so profoundly that a child struggles to see, hear, or talk. Perhaps most painful of all, such deformities render children physically other, potentially leading to a lifetime of corrective surgeries and social isolation.
As director of the UCSF Program in Craniofacial Biology, Klein orchestrates a multisite research endeavor to translate basic science findings in tissue regeneration into improved treatments for these kids. Using stem cells from patients with craniofacial deformities, Klein, Bush, Pomerantz, Knox, Hsiao, and their colleagues are growing tiny functioning segments of organs, called organoids, to figure out exactly when and how in fetal development such design flaws occur.
They are among scientists across UCSF who are cultivating cellular systems such as miniature brains and breasts from patient cells. They serve as dioramas of disease models derived from human cells either displacing or complementing the mouse models that have served science well, though inexactly, for many years. The effort is one of the most obvious and viable payoffs to date from stem cell science. With these organoids, physicians and scientists can not only trace the pathways of normal and abnormal development, but also test drugs and other treatments for their effectiveness in humans. Organoids are also one tiny step toward the ultimate goal of generating complete organs, as a way to circumvent rejection issues and save the lives of those who now die waiting for transplants.
As the reservoirs of human development, stem cells take it upon themselves to tirelessly renew and differentiate into the myriad cell types required to build out a body from an embryo. In creating an organoid, typical construction metaphors do not apply. There are no building blocks to nail, stack, or solder and no job-site supervisor barking orders. "That's not how biology works," says Zev Gartner, PhD, an associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry.
"It is a self-organizing process," he explains, a process that starts in the womb with embryonic stem cells (ESCs) or, in the case of organoids, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). iPSCs are mature cells that are stripped back to their earliest stage of development using a process devised by UCSF Professor of Anatomy Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the process. To make organoids, iPSCs are put through a series of solutions, then added to a gel that mimics the squishy 3-D cellular matrix of the embryo. The gel provides the right conditions for them to get to work.
"Take an organ like the lung. Its basic functional units are a tube and a sac, and outside that sac are capillaries that allow gas exchange. Hundreds of millions of tubes and sacs make a lung," explains Gartner. "You can make the little sacs and the tubes in a dish as an organoid model. But we don't know how to drive the self-organization of those units into much more complex, elaborate, highly ramified structures." The fundamental limitation of organoids is that they lack the vasculature that brings nutrient-laden blood to fuel the evolution of the larger structure.
Gartner notes that people who work with stem cells tend to focus on either regenerative medicine or disease modeling. Those interested in disease make models of tissues so that they can understand how diseases work, while those interested in regenerative medicine try to make models of healthy tissue that could be transplanted. Gartner straddles both camps. He grows breast organoids. "The mammary gland is great because we can simultaneously think about these two phenomena as two sides of the same coin," he says. "One is regenerative medicine through self-organization, and the other is understanding the progression of breast cancer through a breakdown in self-organization."
So there's potentially a triple payoff in stem cell science: By deducing how a breast forms itself, Gartner might figure out how to grow the entire organ. By tracing how cancer throws a wrench in the works, he may be able to target ways to stop that process. And by growing a human organ in a dish, he avoids making cross-species assumptions or putting animals or humans at risk in testing potential drugs to cure breast cancer, greatly accelerating the push toward a cure.
Regenerate
On Klein's team, Jeffrey Bush, PhD, an assistant professor of cell and tissue biology, looks at organoids through the lens of disease.
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The organoids he grows model craniofrontonasal syndrome a birth defect that is caused by a mutation in a single gene and that dramatically impacts the shape of the face and head. He knows from studies reproducing craniofrontonasal syndrome in mice that the first place something goes wrong is in a cell type called the neuroectoderm. To create an organoid to study this, he obtained skin cells from Pomerantz, an associate professor of surgery, who has patients with the syndrome who were willing to donate tissue samples. Such collaborations between basic scientists and clinicians are key to bringing research out of the lab and into patient care.
"We studied this simple system to see how this mutation affected the organization of these cells," says Bush. His group has filmed cells as they rush about to self-organize when they're mixed together. In those films, he explains, "you can see that the mutated cells, which are dyed red, segregate from the normal cells, which are green they are like oil and water." In other words, the mutated cells completely disrupt the behavior of all the cells. By contrast, in the films of cells without the mutation, all the cells circulate easily among one another, like fish in an aquarium. This understanding has allowed Bush to begin to think about a drug that blocks this separation. He has several promising candidates that his team will test in pregnant mice. "Right now," he says, "there isn't a single drug that we can use for any kind of structural birth defects. If we could show that a medication blocks the effects of this mutation, it would serve as proof of principle that something besides surgery can be done. But we would have to know that it was safe for mother and child and that we could catch it early enough."
Reconstruct
Jason Pomerantz, MD, a plastic surgeon, falls into the regeneration camp. His clinical work is typified by a recent eight-hour operation on a 17-year-old boy with Crouzon syndrome, a severely disfiguring condition affecting every organ in the craniofacial structure muscle, bone, and skin. "My patient is excited for the outcome, but not about the process," says Pomerantz, surgical director of the UCSF Craniofacial Center. For three months, the patient will wear a large metal frame on his head with wires that will pull the bones in his face forward. Prior to the surgery, the boy's face was nearly concave, collapsed inward at the nose.
Yet bone is not all Pomerantz needs to work with to restructure a face. The subtle bends, creases, and curves of expression that make a face one's own are the work of tiny muscles. "Right now we can move a big muscle say, from the thigh to the face so that people can smile," he says. "But we can't reconstruct the fine ones that enable people to move their eyebrows up or move the eyeballs around. That requires little muscles. This is where we can make headway with stem cell biology.
"We have actually made a humanized organ in an animal," he continues, pointing to a picture of a mouse on his wall. Pomerantz is now considering incubating small human muscles in animals for use in his patients' faces. In a recent project, he inserted stem cells from human muscles into a mouse whose own muscle stem cells had been incapacitated. He then perturbed the muscle to stimulate regeneration. As the muscle healed, the cells created new muscle tissue, which the mouse's nerves innervated to make a functioning muscle. It's exactly the size of the muscles Pomerantz needs for full articulation of expression and function in a human face or hand.
Create
Muscles are part of a vast and intricate system strewn throughout the body. Teeth, on the other hand, are islands unto themselves. "Teeth intrigue me from a regeneration perspective," says Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, chair of the Division of Craniofacial Anomalies, the Hillblom Professor of Craniofacial Anomalies, the Epstein Professor of Human Genetics, and a resident alumnus. "They are discrete organs all the parts are there." More intriguing still is the fact that many rodents have the ability to grow their front teeth continuously. Elephants and walruses also have ever-growing tusks, and even some primates lemurs can regrow their teeth.
A tooth can be regenerated in parts. Stem cells can be used to grow the root, and then a crown can be added to complete the tooth. To generate a whole organ at once, Klein's colleagues are planning to partner with bioengineers who can produce a biocompatible material that could serve as a framing device to jump-start the creation of dentin, one of the hard components of a tooth. If they start with the right cells, then the scaffolding will give the cells the shape information they need to create the right design. But even that isn't Klein's endgame. "In my lab, we're interested in figuring out why humans can't regrow teeth," he says. "In studying species that can, we hope to unlock the regenerative potential in our own cells that might be turned off."
Klein's work to generate teeth is inspired by his patients with ectodermal dysplasia, a congenital disorder characterized by lack of sweat glands, hair, or teeth. Being able to generate the roots of teeth would be remarkable for these patients, since the rest can be done with a crown. Right now, they must be fitted with dentures.
Klein is also taking another tack to help these patients. "We completed a clinical trial of a drug that basically goosed up the development of the organs when they weren't forming properly," he says. The drug a protein developed by Swiss collaborators of Klein's, based on studies of embryonic mice, who develop these organs in early- to mid-gestation was given to infants with the disorder right after birth. The trial was unsuccessful. Now, scientists in Germany are running a trial of the same drug, giving it instead to mothers carrying babies with this genetic disorder. The scientists will try to gauge what the best timing is for delivering the drug.
"What's great about this drug is that it doesn't seem to have any effects on any other organs besides teeth, hair, and sweat glands," says Klein. "Drugs for other conditions are far riskier, because they affect pathways that are important in the development of many organs."
Maintain
Sarah Knox, PhD, an assistant professor of cell and tissue biology, is using stem cells to figure out how to regenerate salivary glands compromised by radiation treatments for head and neck cancers or by craniofacial deformities. Her focus is on how the environment contributes to the activation and maintenance of the gland. The salivary gland, like all organs, is continuously replenishing the supply of cells and tissues it needs to function. Knox's research shows that the gland takes directional cues from nearby nerve cells not only to remain functional, but also to continuously replace itself. Her organoids are made of cells from a patient and nerve cells (ganglia) from a fetal mouse. "We are trying to explore the relationship between the stem cells and the nerves," she says. "How do the nerves know the tissue is there? How do the nerves provide instruction and feedback? Individual cells die off and new cells have to replace them. Organoids are giving us insight as to where those new cells are coming from and how we keep repopulating [them] all our lives."
As head of the UCSF Program in Craniofacial Biology which is based in the School of Dentistry and the Division of Genetics in the School of Medicine Klein stands at one of science's most compelling crossroads: regenerative medicine and genetics. Far in the future, both fields have potential that seem like science fiction today. We live in a world where people die waiting for organ transplants. What if we could pull these organoids from their petri dish and supply them with the fuel they need to become full-blown organs? Such a feat would necessitate either a host embryo perhaps from a pig, because pigs have organs the size of human organs or some other biological foundation. Some scientists are hoping to jump-start organ development with "scaffolding," or cells engineered to speed the developmental process. Others are zeroing in on the genome, particularly in kids with craniofacial anomalies caused by just one mutation, like craniofrontonasal syndrome; for example, a tool called CRISPR could allow scientists to splice that gene out and replace it with a normal gene. But the tool has yet to be used in humans, let alone a human fetus.
Ethical questions pepper either route. At their best, stem cells regenerate tissues; at their worst, they go rogue and grow into a tumor. "Yet with gene editing tools like CRISPR, you literally have the potential to change the species," says Klein. And in both scenarios, the cells can act with unforeseen off-target effects. Klein and his colleagues are in continual discussion about the repercussions of their work with the director of UCSF Bioethics, Barbara Koenig, RN, PhD '88. "Gene therapy is an example of an exciting new treatment that cured one serious pediatric illness severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome (SCID) but the genes unwittingly led to the development of leukemia," explains Koenig. "Genetic and stem cell interventions must be painstakingly studied before application. And, once they are ready, who will regulate them? There are many questions yet to be answered. The challenges are most extreme when we talk about modifying an egg or sperm cell, where the changes are passed on to the next generation."
So Klein and his colleagues proceed with caution, curiosity, and awe. "The next decade will be an incredibly exciting time," says Klein. "With continual advances in human genetics and developmental and cell biology, we hope to be able to make drugs and use genetic tools to appreciably change the lives of our patients."
The Bone Printer
Bone grows like a runaway train in Edward Hsiao's patients with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP). The slightest bump or injury can set off a spurt of bone growth that can fuse their vertebrae, lock their joints, or even freeze up their rib cages, leaving them unable to breathe.
No one, to date, has successfully engineered bone. Hsiao, MD, PhD, is hoping to spark the process with the help of a 3-D printer from Organovo, a firm that specializes in bioprinting technology. From iPSCs, he can make many of the essential ingredients of bone, including mesenchymal stem cells, endothelial cells, and macrophages. "We are putting cells into the equivalent of an ink. Then we will print the structures with the ink, let the ink dissolve, and leave the cells," explains Hsiao. "The hope is that the cells can then recapitulate the normal developmental process."
If the approach is successful, Hsiao hopes to use the resulting models to test drugs and other treatments to halt or prevent bone deformities. Down the line, his progress also stands to transform bone and joint replacements. Through his work with FOP, he's uncovered one mechanism that drives rapid bone growth. "In these patients, we know that mature bone formation can happen in as quickly as two weeks, so it is possible to grow bone in an adult. We need to understand how to modulate that," says Hsiao. "Someday, my dream would be to be able to identify the cells we need, give someone a drug that induces the right genes and recruits the right cells to the correct site, and have the cells rebuild the joint from scratch."
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Lab-grown organoids hold promise for patient treatments - Medical Xpress
It is an old joke among health-policy wonks that what the American people really want from health-care reform is unlimited care, from the doctor of their choice, with no wait, free of charge. For Republicans, trying to square this circle has led to panic, paralysis, and half-baked policy proposals such as the Obamacare-replacement bill that passed the House last month. For Democrats, it has led from simple disasters such as Obamacare itself to a position somewhere between fantasy and delusion.
The latest effort to fix health care with fairy dust comes from California, whose Senate voted last week to establish a statewide single-payer system. As ambitious as the California legislation is, encompassing everything from routine checkups to dental and nursing-home care, its authors havent yet figured out how it will be paid for. The plan includes no copays, premiums, or deductibles. Perhaps thats because the legislatures own estimates suggest it would cost at least $400 billion, more than the states entire present-day budget. In fairness, legislators hope to recoup about half that amount from the federal government and the elimination of existing state and local health programs. But even so, the plan would necessitate a $200 billion tax hike. One suggestion being bandied about is a 15 percent state payroll tax. Ouch.
The cost of Californias plan is right in line with that of other recent single-payer proposals. For example, last fall, Colorado voters rejected a proposal to establish a single-payer system in that state that was projected to cost more than $64 billion per year by 2028. Voters apparently took note of the fact that, even after figuring in savings from existing programs, possible federal funding, and a new 10 percent payroll tax, the plan would have still run a $12 billion deficit within ten years.
Similarly, last year Vermont was forced to abandon its efforts to set up a single-payer system after it couldnt find a way to pay for the plans nearly $4 trillion price tag. The state had considered a number of financing mechanisms, including an 11.5 percent payroll tax and an income-tax hike (disguised as a premium) to 9.5 percent.
On the national level, who could forget Bernie Sanderss proposed Medicare for All system, which would have cost $13.8 trillion over its first decade of operation? Bernie would have paid for his plan by increasing the top U.S. income-tax rate to an astounding 52 percent, raising everyone elses income taxes by 2.2 percentage points, and raising payroll taxes by 6.2 points. Of course, it is no surprise that Medicare for All would be so expensive, since our current Medicare program is running $58 trillion in the red going forward.
It turns out that free health care isnt really free at all.
How, though, could a single-payer system possibly cost so much? Arent we constantly told that other countries spend far less than we do on health care?
It is true that the U.S. spends nearly a third more on health care than the second-highest-spending developed country (Sweden), both in per capita dollars and as a percentage of GDP. But that reduction in spending can come with a price of its own: The most effective way to hold down health-care costs is to limit the availability of care. Some other developed countries ration care directly. Some spend less on facilities, technology, or physician incomes, leading to long waits for care. Such trade-offs are not inherently bad, and not all health care is of equal value, though that would seem to be a determination most appropriately made by patients rather than the government. But the fact remains that no health care system anywhere in the world provides everyone with unlimited care.
Moreover, foreign health-care systems rely heavily on the U.S. system to drive medical innovation and technology. Theres a reason why more than half of all new drugs are patented in the United States, and why 80 percent of non-pharmaceutical medical breakthroughs, from transplants to MRIs, were introduced first here. If the U.S. were to reduce its investment in such innovation in order to bring costs into line with international norms, would other countries pick up the slack, or would the next revolutionary cancer drug simply never be developed? In the end, there is still no free lunch.
American single-payer advocates simply ignore these trade-offs. They know that their fellow citizens instinctively resist rationing imposed from outside, so they promise unlimited care for all, which is about as realistic as promising personal unicorns for all. In the process, they also ignore the fact that many of the systems they admire are neither single-payer nor free to patients. Above and beyond the exorbitant taxes that must almost always be levied to fund their single-payer schemes, many of these countries impose other costs on patients. There are frequently co-payments, deductibles, and other cost-sharing requirements. In fact, in countries such as Australia, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, consumers cover a greater portion of health-care spending out-of-pocket than do Americans. But American single-payer proposals eliminate most or all such cost-sharing.
Adopting a single-payer system would crush the American economy, lowering wages, destroying jobs, and throwing millions into poverty. The Tax Foundation, for instance, estimated that Sanderss plan would have reduced the U.S. GDP by 9.5 percent and after-tax income for all Americans by an average of 12.8 percent in the long run. That is, simply put, not going to happen. So Americans are likely to end up with a lot less health care and than they have been promised.
Santa Claus will always be more popular than the Grinch. But the health-care debate needs a bit more Grinch and a lot less Santa Claus. Americans cannot have unlimited care, from the doctor of their choice, with no wait, for free. The politician that tells them as much will not be popular. But he or she may save them from something that will much more likely resemble a nightmare than a utopian dream.
Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis. You can follow him on his blog, TannerOnPolicy.com.
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Embracing the Hard Realities of Health-Care Reform - National Review
H
ow to rein in the escalating cost of health care is generating fierce debate across the U.S. Most politicians and health care professionals are focusing on big targets like legislation and the pharmaceutical industry. But the savings were all looking for may well come from far smaller sources, like the personal health devices that many Americans have so readily adopted.
About half of all Americans have one or more chronic conditions heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, arthritis, and asthma, to name a few. Many chronic conditions arise from unhealthy lifestyles that include the usual suspects: poor diet, little or no exercise, and stress. These conditions account for the majority of deaths in the United States, and up to 86 percent of health care expenditures.
Look at diabetes as an example. Nearly 30 million Americans are now living with diabetes, and another 86 million have prediabetes, a higher-than-normal blood sugar level that can lead to diabetes. This disease accounts for unnecessary loss of vision, amputations, heart disease, kidney damage, and premature death. It also costs Americans $245 billion a year. But chronic diseases like diabetes need not take such huge personal or economic tolls. Easily implemented changes that digitize components of health and health care can lighten the load for people, their doctors, and the country at large.
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Millions of Americans currently use devices to monitor their health and fitness. These include scales, activity monitors (Fitbit, Apple Watch, Microsoft Band, and the like), heart rate and blood sugar monitors, and more. The data they record can help people take more control over their health and lifestyles. They can also help doctors keep track of their patients health, as information from these devices can be uploaded into electronic health records. Data from such devices could also alert doctors or first-aid workers to a problem that requires immediate attention, like a stroke or heart attack.
Fitbit likely wont improve your health, study says
Personal health devices are already or soon will be sophisticated enough to detect medical conditions. For instance, if your fitness device indicates that your usual activity level has fallen off but your heart rate is higher than usual, it could be a sign that you are coming down with the flu or other infectious disease.
To be sure, the jury is still out on how effective these devices will be. According to one randomized trial, Fitbit wearers did indeed exercise more but not enough to ensure weight loss and improved fitness the keys to battling chronic diseases.
On the other hand, at least 21 ongoing studies are examining how the Fitbit activity tracker could be used to help make cystic fibrosis patients healthier, to diagnose and treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, to help teens stop smoking, and more. A trial by Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Cognition Kit is using Apple Watches and Microsoft Bands to monitor physiological signs for indications of oncoming bouts of depression. Poole Hospital in the United Kingdom and its partners are developing a solution using the Band to provide more effective care for people with epilepsy.
For many users, these devices are a fun way to keep track of their performance. Users can connect with and compete with friends, and give themselves pats on the back via badges and positive feedback. In effect, the devices and their associated apps can gamify personal health and fitness.
But whats fun for users could also help curb health care spending. Offering users of personal health devices more tangible incentives, like cash or discounts on health insurance, could encourage more physical activity the most important way to prevent and treat many chronic lifestyle-related diseases.
Employers and insurers are already trying this approach. Under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, employers can offer wellness incentives to their employees (paid for by insurers) if they agree to wear a fitness tracker or pedometer or use a fitness app to record their activity. Incentives such as gift cards and rate discounts are available through some national insurers. UnitedHealthcare, for example, offers employees covered through some of its plans up to $4 a day for meeting certain daily walking goals.
Two years in, what has Apple ResearchKit accomplished?
There is, of course, a potential downside to collecting such personal data. One concern is that smart devices could be used to determine if an individual has a preexisting condition maybe even one he or she wasnt aware of. A company could use that information to dump the individual as a customer or place him or her into a high-risk and high-cost customer pool. Health data collected by an employer as part of a wellness program, or by an insurance company as part of an incentive program, may not be subject to the same privacy laws as health data collected by doctors or hospitals. This information is held in databases that dont necessarily have the same security regulations as electronic health records. It could be sold or hacked.
Employers could also use data from fitness devices to weed out unhealthy employees who might end up costing them more money because of chronic lifestyle-related diseases. And if an employer decides to adopt the gamification approach and make fitness a group effort, it could subject employees to fat shaming, or even discrimination penalizing employees for pounds causing extra stress and possibly contributing to unhealthy lifestyle behaviors and the lack of motivation the program was supposed to resolve.
I believe that despite the dearth of overwhelmingly convincing data on the effectiveness of personal health monitors and their inherent risks, the health industry will turn to them as a way to reduce costs. It must do something. U.S. employers currently insure about 170 million people and spend, on average, more than $12,500 in premiums for each employee and his or her family. By 2025, that figure will reach $24,500. A big chunk of that bill is due to preventable chronic diseases.
Activity trackers and other devices can motivate their users to live healthier lifestyles, especially as technology improves to become more precise and accurate (were not quite there yet). Incentives to use these devices are likely to grow, though employers, insurance companies, and health care providers will have to convince people that the data generated by the devices wont be used against them.
This digital health care revolution may not be the all-encompassing solution to the tsunami of chronic disease that threatens to break the health care bank, but it is one that can doubtlessly have a great and lasting impact.
Yiftah Ben Aharon is co-founder and CEO of GlucoMe, a digital diabetes clinic.
Yiftah Ben Aharon can be reached at yiftah@glucome.com
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Small wearable devices may lead to big health care savings - STAT
CINCINNATI Continuing the White House's infrastructure week, President Donald Trump took his pitch for rebuilding America to the very people that elected him on Wednesday.
With the Ohio River as his backdrop, Trump marketed his plans as a crucial step to rebuilding a crumbling U.S infrastructure system.
"It's time to recapture our legacy as a nation of builders," Trump said. "And to create new lanes of travel, commerce and discovery."
The future, he predicted, was going to be "beautiful and the future's going to be bright."
"Together we will fix it," the president promised corporations and citizens gathered on the banks of the Ohio. "We will create the first class infrastructure our country and our people deserve."
Related: Both Parties Say Trumps Infrastructure Plan Needs Repair
Trump also pushed another legislative priority: repealing and replacing Obamacare.
Obamacare, Trump said, is "crashing. It's dead, it's in a death spiral."
He blamed Democrats for obstructing the long promised Republican repeal and replace of the Democrats' signature healthcare law, calling them "obstructionists" and lamenting the lack of bipartisanship on "every single thing."
Hours earlier, Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, and Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, refused during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday to confirm or deny allegations that Trump asked them to interfere in the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in the 2016 elections.
Trump also surprised some White House staff and Hill lawmakers alike Wednesday by tweeting news that Chris Wray, a former DOJ assistant attorney general and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's personal attorney during the "Bridgegate" scandal, to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey.
One White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News most of us learned about it from the tweet.
Asked soon after the presidents tweet if there would be a public announcement to come, Principle Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told NBC News the president just did it, referring to the tweet.
The White House released an official announcement on Wednesday afternoon.
The nature of Trumps tweets have come under scrutiny of late, with Press Secretary Sean Spicer telling reporters Tuesday that the presidents tweets should be taken as official statements.
Wednesday's "infrastructure week" stop on the Ohio River dovetailed with a push Monday from the White House to privatize Air Traffic Control, separating the entity from the Federal Aviation Administration and making it a non-government non-profit.
We will work directly with state and local governments to give them the freedom and flexibility they need to revitalize our nations infrastructure, he said.
Trump, who is often touted by his vice president as a builder, will stress his campaign promises to rebuild America on Thursday when he meets with state and local leaders to discuss the need for an increased focus on roads and bridges.
That same day, Comey will testify on Capitol Hill.
As Trump wrapped his infrastructure push, Comey's prepared remarks went live online.
Some supporters in Cincinnati, however, scoff at the focus on Comey's testimony and continued media coverage of probes into whether there was improper communication between Trump officials and Russia during the 2016 campaign.
Alex Adams, 19, agreed, discarding "this fake Russian story that there was collusion" and said he was "ticked off" by attempts to discredit Trump's powered-by-the-people win.
Randy Chrisman told NBC News on Wednesday he's "disappointed" that there are "so many distractions" from the Trump is trying to do.
Trump's tweeting can sometimes do more harm than good, some supporters say.
"Sometimes it would be good if he said less, maybe, on Twitter," Chrisman said. "But that's what he chooses to do."
The concern for Chrisman and supporters like him, however, remained squarely on infrastructure.
"You know, we've built some really good things but keeping up with it and keeping the maintenance of it - some of its really hurt the system," he said, anxious to hear what Trump would propose.
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Trump Pivots to Health Care, Infrastructure on Eve of Comey Hearing - NBCNews.com
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USA TODAY 12:46 p.m. ET June 7, 2017
President Trump(Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)
The theme of President Trump's trip to Cincinnati today was supposed to be his plan to shore up America's infrastructure, but his list of talking points is getting crowded.
The president announced on Twitter this morning that he'll also meet with "ObamaCare victims" and will discuss health care. Watch the president's speech live in the player above.
Later, White House officials indicated he'd talk jobs and energy, too, and would surround himself with coal miners and steel workers in hard hats.It's also possible the president could talk about his troubles back in Washington, where former FBI Director James Comey is set to testify Thursday before Congress.
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Live stream: Trump discusses health care during Ohio visit - USA TODAY
Health care presents one of the biggest opportunities for startups--as well as some of the biggest frustrations. The market size and the potential to make an impact in people's lives are nearly unrivaled, as is the level of regulation. Still, in 2016, venture investors poured $12.2 billion into health care, backing companies that promise to change everything from cancer care to the process of finding a new doctor. Here are some of the standouts.
Flatiron founders Zach Weinberg (left) and Nat Turner.
CREDIT: Saskia Uppenkamp
Google Ventures-backed Flatiron Health has developed a cloud-based technology platform that's currently used by about 260 cancer clinics. The New York City startup takes the patient data it collects from those centers--without identifying details, of course--and shares it with pharmaceutical companies and researchers. The company raised an $8 million series A round in 2013. A little more than a year later, it raised $130 million, and a year after that, an additional $175 million, bringing its valuation to about $1.2 billion. Flatiron is one of fewer than a dozen billion-dollar-valuation "unicorn" companies in the health care space.
Major Investors: Google Ventures, First Round Capital, Roche, Allen & Co.
CREDIT: Courtesy Company
Freenome, headquartered in South San Francisco, is one of a slew of so-called liquid biopsy (i.e., blood test) companies to break out over the past few years. The goal is to use a patient's DNA, rather than a tissue sample, to diagnose cancer. Freenome says its tests do better than the current options for diagnosing prostate, breast, colorectal, and lung cancers. The company is using a $65 million round of funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz, to head into clinical trials.
Major investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Charles River Associates
CREDIT: Courtesy Company
Another health care unicorn, Clover Health is an insurance start-up aiming to use data science to improve preventive medicine. The San Francisco-based company tracks dozens of clinical and social data points to help elderly and low-income patients avoid hospital visits. It currently handles claims for about 25,000 Medicare Advantage patients in New Jersey. With a recent $130 million funding round from Google Ventures and other backers, Clover plans to expand, and begin operations in three more states by this fall.
Major investors: First Round Capital, Sequoia Capital, Greenoaks Capital
CREDIT: Courtesy Company
New York City-based ZocDoc allows users to find in-network health care providers, book appointments online, and read reviews from other patients. About 6 million patients in the U.S. use the service each month. Providers pay a subscription fee to be listed, and then ZocDoc integrates with their practice management software. ZocDoc recently added a feature that lets patients type in their symptoms using natural language and then matches them with an appropriate provider, such as a doctor, dentist, nurse practitioner, or physical therapist. The company has raised a total of $223 million.
Major investors: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Khosla Ventures, Goldman Sachs
CREDIT: Courtesy Company
In 2013, the FDA ruled that genetic-testing company 23andMe, which has raised a total of $233 million, could no longer sell one of its signature services: test results that indicate a person's propensity to develop inherited diseases. Since then, Mountain View, California's 23andMe has mainly been using its genetic testing services to provide information about ancestry and origin. But in April of this year, the company finally won FDA approval to sell direct-to-consumer tests that provide genetic health risk information for conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and hereditary thrombophilia.
Major investors: Google Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, WuXi Healthcare Ventures
CREDIT: Courtesy Company
London-based Babylon Health, which has raised a total of $85 million, started as a telemedicine company, enabling doctors to make diagnoses via video and allowing patients to rate the quality of each interaction. But it's received more notice lately for another program it's piloting in the U.K.: an AI-powered chatbot that analyzes a patient's condition against a database of symptoms, while incorporating the patient's own medical history and responses to the chatbot's questions.
Major investors: Vostok New Ventures, Hoxton Ventures, Mustafa Suleyman
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New York Times | Ossoff and Handel Joust Over Health Care and Who's the Real Georgian New York Times Channeling Democrats' determination to make health care a central issue in congressional elections, Mr. Ossoff aggressively went after Ms. Handel for the House-backed health care bill, which he said guts protections for Americans with pre-existing ... Ossoff, Handel Get Into Highly Charged Debate Over Health Care Livable wages, health care lectures: The most striking 6th District debate moments |
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Ossoff and Handel Joust Over Health Care and Who's the Real Georgian - New York Times
In the beginning, there was Obamacare. Since January, weve seen repeal and replace, repeal and repair, a draft American Health Care Act, a near-vote in the house, two new amendments, an actual vote in the house, and now whispers about the Senates rewrite, which should become public any day now.
Its just one of 2017s little surprises that when were feeling overwhelmed and confused, Twitter can be the cure. (Im still trying to process that, but it seems to be true.) If you follow a few knowledgeable folks, youll be able to keep track of whats actually happeningnot just with attempts to pass Trumpcare, but also the ways our current administration is sabotaging the Obamacare markets to manufacture a crisis. Here are my top picks:
Andy Slavitt knows more than probably anyone else about how Obamacare workshe was in charge of it for most of two years, as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Since Trump took office, Slavitt has dedicated his time to demystifying health care policy for the public. Hell speak at a town hall if your Republican congressperson wont hold one. And, most usefully for us, hes a great source of insider information on what lawmakers are talking about right now. Hes also on top of picking out obscure details of health care policy and explaining what their real-world effects will be.
Dan Diamond is a reporter for Politico, writing their daily Pulse newsletter about health policy and hosting the Pulse Check podcast. His feed is a good way to keep on top of health-related political newsincluding plenty of links from Politico, of course. A specialty of Diamonds is the brief, pithy statistic, like so:
Topher Spiro was part of the team that drafted the Affordable Care Act. Hes now the vice president for health policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank that publishes lots of analysis on whats going on with Obamacare and what could happen with Trumpcare. For example, theyre the folks who estimated people with cancer could end up paying $140,000 extra per year in premiums. Spiro keeps us up to date on analysis like this, and is another great source of threads that explain policy details in terms of what will happen in real life.
Kliff writes about health policy for Vox. On Twitter, she gives a big-picture view of health care laws across the country: not just Obamacare and Trumpcare, but also whats going on in state legislatures. She also shares a ton of explainers and maps from Vox and elsewhere.
Cox is the associate director of the Kaiser Family Foundation, where her job is figuring out how the ACA affects private insurance and their enrollees. If youve got insurance through your job and think the ACA didnt affect you because youre not on Obamacare, you need to read the kind of stuff Cox is talking about. Right now, thats the stability of insurance markets: Anthem may pull out of a lot of markets, leaving people in many areas with no insurer, because the Trump administration has threatened to cut off some of the ACAs mandated funding.
Following these people may not reduce your total intake of health care doom and gloom (and thats a bipartisan statement; everybody hates something about health policy these days), but theyll help you keep up on the important details that tend to get buried in news stories.
PS. Im sure I missed some great follows; please share your favorites in the comments so we can all learn together.
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Follow These People on Twitter to Understand What's Happening With Health Care - Lifehacker
Forbes | Why UnitedHealth Rules Among Health Care Stocks Forbes Never mind that the Republican-controlled Congress can't seem to get its act together to repeal, much less replace, the Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare. But health care stocks are doing just fine, in spite of the continued ... |
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Paul Crowe, CEO of NuView Life Sciences, discusses genetic testing to determine cancer treatments.
Park City, UT (PRWEB) June 07, 2017
In 2017, an estimated 1,688,780 new cancer cases will be diagnosed in the United States(1). Up to 10% of these cases will be caused by inherited genetic mutations(2), while almost two thirds of these cases will result from random mutations that occur as cells copy themselves in a process called DNA replication(3). While genetic testing is already being used to explore triggers for cancer development, researchers are now investigating the use of genetic testing to choose specific cancer treatments based on an individuals unique genetic makeup. As this field of genetics grows, companies like NuView Life Sciences are developing innovative technologies that can be used to target cancerous cells.
In recent years, genetic testing for certain mutations, such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, has become a mainstay in cancer diagnostic tests, specifically those that are more likely to occur as a result of genetic abnormalities. However, researchers are now better understanding the role that genetic mutations play in a patients response to treatment. Since certain mutations can make a patient less likely to respond to treatment(4), efforts involving the use of genetic testing to determine patient-specific treatment plans have grown.
Paul Crowe, CEO of NuView Life Sciences, says, Were finding out now that the mutations that lead to cancer can also be used to identify certain treatments that give the patient the best shot at success. At NuView, were already in the process of developing advanced technology, specifically our NV-VPAC1 platform, that will be able to use identified mutations to target cancerous cells and deliver treatment based on the patients unique genetic makeup.
For years, cancer treatment has involved the application of one-size-fits-all treatment methods like chemotherapy and radiation. Instead of delivering treatment directly to cancer cells, these treatments affect all cells that grow and divide, including normal, healthy cells(4). While the patient may benefit from such treatments, there is no guarantee that they will be effective against specific types of cancer(4). These broad-spectrum therapies can also cause many serious side effects that negatively impact the patient and reduces their quality of life through treatment(4).
As the field of precision medicine evolves, genetic testing is proving useful in the identification of cellular targets containing mutations that drive cancer progression(5). It is now possible to identify cancer cells based on abnormal protein levels, or by specific mutations that can easily be identified in a persons chromosomes(5). As cancerous cells are isolated, individual treatments can be determined based on the cells unique mutations. Instead of relying on standard therapies, precision medicine technologies, like NuViews NV-VPAC1, can be used to administer targeted cancer therapies to specific cellular destinations that have been identified as cancerous.
Crowe says, We want patients to be able to receive treatment thats based on their unique circumstances instead of standard therapies that are given with no real regard for a persons individual genetics. We are working toward using our technology to deliver treatment directly to cancer cells, administering precisely determined doses of medications that, based on a persons individual genetic composition, could prove to have the most success in stopping the spread of cancer.
About NuView Life Sciences: Founded in 2005, NuView Life Sciences is a biotechnology company located in Park City, Utah, working to improve the way cancer is diagnosed and treated in our modern healthcare system. NuView is focused on creating precision cancer diagnostics and therapeutics to improve patient outcomes while reducing healthcare costs through the development and clinical application of its exclusive peptide analog technology, NV-VPAC1.
Led by a team of industry experts with decades of combined experience in healthcare and medical imaging technologies, NuView is poised to change how we look for and respond to cancer. To learn more about NuView Life Sciences, please visit http://nuviewinfo.com/site/3/.
Sources: 1.Cancer Facts & Figures 2017. American Cancer Society. https://www.cancer.org/research/cancer-facts-statistics/all-cancer-facts-figures/cancer-facts-figures-2017.html 2.The Genetics of Cancer. National Cancer Institute. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/genetics 3.Random mutations blamed for big role cancer. CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-random-genetic-dna-mutations-two-thirds-of-cases/ 4.Genetic Tests for Targeted Cancer Therapy. Lab Tests Online. https://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/cancer-therapy/ 5.Targeted Cancer Therapies. National Cancer Institute. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/targeted-therapies/targeted-therapies-fact-sheet
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