Archive for October, 2020

Yep, cheese and fruit are healthy bedtime snacks.

Many of us have been taught that eating before bed is a bad idea. But what should you do if you wake up in the middle of the night with a growling stomach, or you can't fall asleep because you were already hungry before bed? Or, sometimes you're just craving a snack while binge-watching Netflix, even if you're not that hungry. Whatever the reason for snacking, some bedtime snacks are healthier than others.

"Bedtime snacks can be healthy and can help you sleep better," says Tony Castillo, a registered dietician and performance dietician at Nutrition for Performance. He says people who workout regularly and are active in particular can benefit, since you can add in nutrients that can help muscles repair and recover while you sleep.

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But there are some foods you may want to avoid eating before bed because they may disrupt your sleep. You'll want to avoid junk food that contains lots of sugar and processed carbs, since those can work against helping you get a good night's sleep. "The fast-digesting carbs could cause a boost of energy," says Castillo.

Something else you'll want to avoid before bed? Spicy foods, since those can cause acid reflux, and no one wants to wake up to digestive issues throughout the night. Another common heartburn trigger is chocolate, because it'shigh in fat and contains other ingredients that can mess with digestion at night.

Keep reading below for more bedtime nutrition tips and ideas for healthy snacks that can help you sleep better tonight.

Besides focusing on balancing nutrition with high quality foods (like the ones below) at night, you should also consider timing your snacks in a way that does not interfere with sleep. This can vary from person to person, but typically you will want to avoid eating immediately before falling asleep.

"There are some individuals that can eat something right before bed and have no issues. Others may have to have a cutoff time of two hours [before bed] because eating the food may cause acid reflux," Castillo says. It may take some trial and error, but giving yourself some room to digest before bed can help prevent problems.

Peanut butter and bananas or peanut butter on whole-grain, high-fiber toast are examples of balanced night-time snacks.

"I recommend a slow-digesting protein and high-fiber carbohydrate," Castillo says. "You want the slow-digesting protein to keep the muscle-building switch on while you sleep. You want a high-fiber carb because a fast-digesting carb can cause a blood sugar spike and keep you awake."

Slow-digesting and high fiber carbs are ones that tend to be easier on your blood sugar, helping avoid spikes or subsequent crashes. Examples of slow-digesting carbs are whole grains, oats, brown rice, fruits and veggies. Slow-digesting proteinsinclude casein, which is found in dairy, such as yogurt and cheese, and is available as a protein powder. Peanut butter is also useful to eat before bed because it contains tryptophan, which helps your brain and muscles relax.

Healthy bedtime snack examples:

Almonds contain melatonin and magnesium, which can help you sleep better.

Certain foods can promote better sleep, for reasons other than helping you feel full. Certain foods naturally contain nutrients that promote sleep like melatonin, the hormone that makes you feel sleepy.

Foods that can help you sleep:

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

See more here:
Healthy bedtime snacks that won't mess with your sleep - CNET

Breast cancer affects one in eight women in the United States. Its one of the most common cancers in the country, but thanks to preventative screenings and developments in treatment, the disease currently has a five-year relative survival rate of 90 percent. But when you dig into the statistics a bit more, youre presented with a less optimistic outlook. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black and white women get breast cancer at about the same rate, but breast cancer deaths among Black women are 40 percent higher than white women. (For Asian, Hispanic, and Native American women, the risk of developing and dying from breast cancer is lower than white women.) These are the straight facts, laid out in black and white.

The reasons Black women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women are complex, but the disparity is, in fact, surmountable. The solutions arent easy or quick, but they do exist. If this is a problem that doesnt need toand shouldntexist, why does it?

As with any cancer, early diagnosis is key to successful treatment, and the fact that white women tend to be diagnosed at an earlier stage of breast cancer than Black women exposes a major problem from the get-go. Its really a matter of the benefit of being screened in a mammogram, which is how we screen for breast cancer, says Nicola Finley, MD, an integrative physician at Canyon Ranch Tucson. Unfortunately, Black women [tend to be] diagnosed for all cancers when theyre at a more advanced stage. This leads to a higher mortality rate, because there are more obstacles and barriers in terms of treatment at a more advanced stage.

Health-care access is a huge driver of this disparity, says Jennifer Sims, PhD, an assistant professor at Jackson State Universitys School of Public Health who wrote an academic paper about health and racial disparity in breast cancer. Black women tend to have limited access to quality health care, and the reason for this is because they tend to have a lower economic status, she explains. Black women are statistically more likely to live in poverty than white women, which not only affects insurance access but also access to transportation, the ability to take time off work, and arrange child careall of which impacts a persons ability to seek care in the first place.

Thus, many Black women are forced to wait to go to the doctor until theres something visibly wrong, says Dipali Sharma, PhD, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University. One of my colleagues and I were discussing this very topic the other day and she told me about a Black women who had a breast tumor that was literally coming through her skin. But she kept waiting and hoping it would just go away on its own because it was difficult for her to take off of work, Dr. Sharma says. Often, by the time Black women come to the clinic, their cancer is already stage three or four. (Research supports this observation.)

New research also suggests once a breast cancer diagnosis is given, Black women face longer delays to starting treatment and longer treatment times than white women. Even among women with low socioeconomic status, we still saw fewer delays among white women, underscoring the disparate experience of Black women, who appear to experience unique barriers, said lead author Marc Emerson, PhD, in a press release about the study. These delays could affect outcomes, since the longer cancer goes untreated, the harder it is to eliminate. More research needs to be done to understand exactly whats contributing to these delays, but the authors theorize that specific financial and transportation barriers could be at play.

Even when Black women are able to get to the doctor, Dr. Sims says they often face medical racism that impacts their care, regardless of social status. In her book, Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System, Tina Sacks, an assistant professor at UC Berkeleys School of Social Welfare, discusses the many challenges Black middle-class women face in trying to get doctors to take their concerns seriously. This can lead to them being less likely to get further medical testing and screenings when theyre needed. To her point, a Journal of Clinical Oncology study found that Black women, regardless of their risk level, are less likely than white women to undergo genetic testing for the BRCA1/2 geneaka the gene associated with breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancerin large part because physicians are less likely to recommend it to them.

Some doctors see breast cancer as a white womans disease more than a Black womans disease, so they may not screen Black women as often. Jennifer Sims, PhD

As a Black woman, when I see a doctor, I always make sure to present myself in a particular way, says Dr. Sims. Most of the time when a doctor sees me, they see a Black woman and nothing else. I always make sure they know I did my research beforehand so they take me seriously. I tell them Im an assistant professor and have a PhD and studied at Harvard Medical School. In doing so, I tend to be treated differently than my sister, who has the exact same doctor as I do. This is an example of the type of bias most white women will never experience.

Additionally, Dr. Sims says some Black women feel judged by doctors, which affects their interest in seeking care. If someone has had a negative experience with a doctor who made them feeling shamed, judged, or discriminated against in the past, they are less likely to make check-ups and appointments a priority, she says.

Even if the playing field was level, and women of all races had the same access to unbiased health care, Black women would still be at a disadvantage when it comes to their survival. Sandra Luyindula, MD, a primary care physician at Proactive MD, says that Black women are more likely than white women to be diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, a subtype of the disease that is linked to a worse prognosis than other subtypes. (It makes up 10 to 15 percent of all breast cancer cases.)Triple-negative breast cancer is two to three times more common in Black women under the age of 60, she says, adding that it is also more aggressive and has a higher likelihood of recurrence than other types of breast cancer.

Sadly, Dr. Luyindula says we still dont know why this type of cancer is more common in Black women. Triple negative breast cancer is certainly being studied, but [researchers] havent figured it out yet, she says. And there arent many treatment options that work for it, either. Dr. Sharma explains that not only is triple-negative breast cancer aggressive, it doesnt respond to hormone therapy or targeted drugs.

There definitely needs to be more therapy options for women with triple-negative breast cancer, Dr. Sims says. There is a new drug that came out this year, Trodelvy, but whats interesting about that particular drug is that the clinical studies didnt actually include many Black women.This is unfathomable to her. Triple-negative breast cancer predominately affects Black women, so why arent they part of the clinical studies?

This shows that racial bias isnt limited to the doctors office; it permeates research institutes and clinical trials as well. Theres this untrue belief that Black women dont want to participate in medical studies, but the truth is, we need to make it easier for them, Dr. Sharma says. For example, at Johns Hopkins, often we give study participants a gift card as an incentive to participate in studies. But when we issued surveys, we learned something that keeps them from participating is the cost of parking, which can be $20 or $25. So something as simple as giving them a free parking sticker can make it easier for people to participate in studies.

Of course, study participants also need transportation, childcare, and the ability to take time off of work. Rather than writing off a population, we really need to ask what can be done to make participating in studies easier, and then do whats necessary to meet the needs, Dr. Sharma says.

More inclusive clinical studies will lead to better treatment outcomes for Black women diagnosed with breast cancer, but that alone is not enough. We need multilayered solutions that match the complexity of the problem.

To start, Dr. Sims says doctors and health-care providers should go through implicit bias training. Some doctors see breast cancer as a white womans disease more than a Black womans disease, so they may not screen Black women as often, even if they are showing the same symptoms as a white woman, she says. A lot of this bias is unconscious. You may think you have no bias toward Black women, or even women in general, and then you take an implicit-bias test and you see that you are biased.

Most of the time when a doctor sees me, they see a Black woman and nothing else. Dr. Jennifer Sims

Patient advocates and, in some cases, interpreters can also benefit Black women navigating a cancer diagnosis, and perhaps improve their survival chances. Dr. Luyindula says that at her practice, all patientsregardless of race or socioeconomic statusare assigned a patient advocate who ensures they have everything they need to continue treatment, including transportation. She adds that patient advocates can also help address a patients concerns about their ability to come to treatment appointments, access to healthy foods, or other health concernsall questions a doctor might not be able to fully answer during a time-pressed appointment. Meanwhile, an interpreter can help patients overcome language barriers to get the answers they need to make decisions about their carewhich can help improve outcomes, too.

More effort needs to be made for breast cancer prevention to be equitable, too. Mammogram screenings, which are the first line of defense again breast cancer, need to be more accessible to more people where theyre at. Dr. Sims says shes seen creative solutions for this problem, like volunteer organizations hosting cancer screenings at predominantly Black churches. Another solution could be free mammogram screenings at various workplaces, so it doesnt require taking time off work to be screened.

These solutions are just a start, but with time they can make a difference. There needs to be creative solutions to meet needs at an individual level because not everyone has the same needs, Dr. Luyindula says. This is a big, multifactorial issue. We need to understand every component to treat this issue as a whole.

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Black Women Arent More Likely To Get Breast Cancer, but They Are More Likely To Die From It - Well+Good

It was a simple study design. Retrospective and observational, in today's science, a fishing trip for correlation by computer. All the patients with a positive COVID-19 test during March through June of this year from Quest served as the population, which was refined to include only those who had a Vitamin D level drawn in the previous year. A patient's ethnicity was "inferred" from their zip code based upon the 2018 America Community Study, a government study done every five years that reports on the many demographics of our country. 88% of those with positive COVID-19 tests also had a Vitamin D test, so the study group consisted of 192,000 individuals from across the nation.

"There was an association between lower SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates and higher circulating 25(OH)D levels."

The researchers acknowledge the limitation that their population was selected based on how symptomatic they might have been; after all, the request for COVID-19 testing was prompted by some concern on the part of the patient or physician. They also note that inferring ethnicity from zip codes may be problematic. Is this a sufficient mea culpa?

Not really. There is a second selection bias left unstated and more problematic why were these individuals having Vitamin D levels determined? It is not a routine laboratory test. There are a variety of conditions that may result in a deficiency. There are several that have been noted in other settings to be COVID-19 risk factors. They include obesity and its surgical management, chronic kidney disease, immobility that would leave you housebound or in a nursing facility, a higher risk of fractures, and skin color; darker-skinned individuals are less able to produce Vitamin D given similar exposure to the sun. Other recognized causes of Vitamin D deficiency include medications used to treat HIV, epilepsy, and elevated cholesterol. I suspect because the authors do not elucidate that the population under study were those who had a suspected deficiency in Vitamin D, who coincidentally had COVID-19 tests. That changes the denominator and makes the sample size of their population much different.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about Vitamin D. We know that it is essential, but what constitutes deficiency remains a product of consensus. Values in the group that the researchers identified as deficient are in that consensus. But the use of italics in categorizing that level as a "deficiency" is the nuanced signal that the word choice itself is a bit biased. Because physicians have no hard and fast cut-off, estimates of Vitamin D deficiency in the population range from 50% to 100%. The lay press has identified many early symptoms of a possible Vitamin D deficiency, including fatigue, frequent colds, bone, muscle and back pain, hair loss, and depression. When coupled with an inexpensive, non-prescription treatment, you have the setting for screening more low risk than high-risk patients. The CDCreportsthat Vitamin D testing increased 83-fold between 2000 and 2010 among Medicare beneficiaries, an admittedly higher risk group.

This study sheds no additional light or insights. It merely adds to the growing literature that Vitamin D may or may not be involved in, whatever disease you wish to mention.

Source: SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates associated with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels PLOS DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239252

More:
Can Vitamin D Play a Role in Treating or Preventing COVID-19? - American Council on Science and Health

Updated Results Demonstrate Significant DCCR Exposure Response Relationship

Interim Analysis of Open-Label Extension Data Demonstrate Continued Efficacy

Improvements in Body Composition and Metabolic Measures Support Efficacy of DCCR in Treatment of PWS Symptoms

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sept. 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Soleno Therapeutics, Inc. (Soleno) (NASDAQ: SLNO), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutics for the treatment of rare diseases, today announced that updated top-line results from the Companys Phase III trial, DESTINY PWS (C601), evaluating once-daily Diazoxide Choline Controlled Release (DCCR) tablets for patients with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), were highlighted in an oral presentation by Jennifer L. Miller, M.D., Professor in the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology at the University of Florida, at the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research Annual Research Symposium.

DESTINY PWS is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase III study of oncedaily oral administration of DCCR in 127 PWS patients conducted at 29 sites in the U.S. and U.K. The objective of the study was to assess the efficacy and safety of DCCR in subjects ages four years and older, with genetically-confirmed PWS. Patients who completed the double-blind study enrolled in study C602, an ongoing open-label, extension study.

Soleno previously announced initial top-line results from DESTINY PWS in June 2020. The study did not meet its primary endpoint of change from baseline in hyperphagia, measured by the total score of a Hyperphagia Questionnaire for Clinical Trials (HQ-CT, 036). However, significant changes were observed in two of three key secondary endpoints, improvement in physician assessed Clinical Global Impression of Improvement score and reduction of body fat mass, in subjects receiving DCCR as compared to placebo. An interim analysis of the subset of patients who completed 13 weeks of treatment on C602 showed a continued improvement in hyperphagia, as well as several other PWS related behaviors.

Key updated results:

The results from this program continue to demonstrate DCCRs beneficial impact on hyperphagia, the predominant symptom of PWS, other behaviors typical of PWS, as well as problems related to body composition, and a safety profile that is well understood, said Dr. Miller, a Principal Investigator in the Soleno study. The sum total of data presented to date suggest that DCCR, if approved, may be a safe and effective treatment option that can address both the behavioral and metabolic components of PWS. I look forward to continued progress in advancing DCCR as the first potentially approved treatment for key unmet needs associated with PWS, a devastating condition with life-threatening comorbidities.

These compelling updated data bolster our confidence in DCCRs safety and efficacy profile in PWS, said Anish Bhatnagar, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Soleno Therapeutics. We continue to treat patients in study C602, our open-label extension. As we have previously communicated, we expect to meet with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before year-end to determine next steps and a potential path forward to address the unmet need for a safe and effective treatment option for PWS patients.

DCCR has orphan designation for the treatment of PWS in the U.S. and EU and Fast Track designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

About PWSThe Prader-Willi Syndrome Association USA estimates that one in 12,000 to 15,000 people in the U.S. have PWS. The hallmark symptom of this disorder is hyperphagia, a chronic feeling of insatiable hunger that severely diminishes the quality of life for PWS patients and their families. Additional characteristics of PWS include behavioral problems, cognitive disabilities, low muscle tone, short stature (when not treated with growth hormone), the accumulation of excess body fat, developmental delays, and incomplete sexual development. Hyperphagia can lead to significant morbidities (e.g., stomach rupture, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease) and mortality (e.g., choking, accidental death due to food seeking behavior). In a global survey conducted by the Foundation for Prader-Willi Research, 96.5% of respondents (parent and caregivers) rated hyperphagia as the most important or a very important symptom to be relieved by a new medicine. There are currently no approved therapies to treat the hyperphagia/appetite, metabolic, cognitive function, or behavioral aspects of the disorder. Diazoxide choline has received Orphan Drug Designation for the treatment of PWS in the U.S. and EU, and Fast Track Designation in the U.S.

About Diazoxide Choline Controlled-Release (DCCR) TabletDiazoxide Choline Controlled-Release tablet is a novel, proprietary extended-release, crystalline salt formulation of diazoxide, which is administered once-daily. The parent molecule, diazoxide, has been used for decades in thousands of patients in a few rare diseases in neonates, infants, children and adults, but has not been approved for use in PWS. Soleno conceived of and established extensive patent protection on the therapeutic use of diazoxide and DCCR in patients with PWS. The DCCR development program is supported by data from five completed Phase I clinical studies in healthy volunteers and three completed Phase II clinical studies, one of which was in PWS patients. In the PWS Phase II study, DCCR showed promise in addressing hyperphagia, the hallmark symptom of PWS, as well as several other symptoms such as aggressive/destructive behaviors, fat mass and other metabolic parameters.

About Soleno Therapeutics, Inc.Soleno is focused on the development and commercialization of novel therapeutics for the treatment of rare diseases. The companys lead candidate, Diazoxide Choline Controlled-Release (DCCR) tablets, a once-daily oral tablet for the treatment of Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), is currently being evaluated in a Phase III clinical development program. For more information, please visit http://www.soleno.life.

Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding timing of any regulatory process or ultimate approvals and determining a path forward for DCCR for the treatment of PWS and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our operations and clinical trial. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as "may," "will," "should," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "could," "intend," "target," "project," "contemplates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential" or "continue" or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including the risks and uncertainties associated with market conditions, as well as risks and uncertainties inherent in Solenos business, including those described in the company's prior press releases and in the periodic reports it files with the SEC. The events and circumstances reflected in the company's forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur and actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable law, the company does not plan to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein, whether as a result of any new information, future events, changed circumstances or otherwise.

Corporate Contact:Brian RitchieLifeSci Advisors, LLC212-915-2578

Read more from the original source:
Soleno Therapeutics Announces Updated Top-line Results from Phase III Trial of DCCR for Treatment of Prader-Willi Syndrome - GlobeNewswire

Just as scientists are rapidly learning how SARS-CoV-2 affects humans, they are also quickly working to understand how it affects other animals. House cats, tigers, golden hamsters, and rhesus monkeys are all susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. And while avian species such as duck and chicken are not, dogs, pigs, and ferrets have shown intermediate susceptibility.

The critical entry point for the virus into our cells is a protein called ACE2, which bonds withthe spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.Animals and humans both expressing ACE2 in their cells, so scientists have been wondering why different species have different SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility, and if it is possible to predict which animals might be at risk.

In a preprint posted on bioRxiv in July, researchers at Vanderbilt Universityapproached this question by comparing the amino acid sequence of ACE2 from different animal species. Amino acids are compounds that combine to form proteins. Inside cells, this amino acid chain folds into a three-dimensional shape. And as a result, some amino acids become hidden, and others exposed. Exposed ACE2 amino acids are of great interest because they determine whether SARS-CoV-2 can attach to the cell.

Using computer models, researchers identified amino acids in ACE2 that showed strong interactions with SARS-CoV-2. They observed that in non-susceptible animal species, these amino acids were often different, ultimately disrupting the attachment between the ACE2 protein and the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. This allowed the researchers to make predictions about which animals species are possibly at risk of infection. They estimated that while horses and camels would be vulnerable to infection, cows, goats, and Malayan pangolins would present intermediate susceptibility.

In August, another preprint fromresearchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotiaexamined whether marine wildlife are susceptible to the virus. Using similar modeling methods, these researchers concluded that whales, dolphins, seals, and otters would be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. They suggest that exposure could happen through contaminated sewage entering the sea.

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Lactose tolerance spread through Europe faster than previously thought - Massive Science

Just as scientists are rapidly learning how SARS-CoV-2 affects humans, they are also quickly working to understand how it affects other animals. House cats, tigers, golden hamsters, and rhesus monkeys are all susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. And while avian species such as duck and chicken are not, dogs, pigs, and ferrets have shown intermediate susceptibility.

The critical entry point for the virus into our cells is a protein called ACE2, which bonds withthe spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.Animals and humans both expressing ACE2 in their cells, so scientists have been wondering why different species have different SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility, and if it is possible to predict which animals might be at risk.

In a preprint posted on bioRxiv in July, researchers at Vanderbilt Universityapproached this question by comparing the amino acid sequence of ACE2 from different animal species. Amino acids are compounds that combine to form proteins. Inside cells, this amino acid chain folds into a three-dimensional shape. And as a result, some amino acids become hidden, and others exposed. Exposed ACE2 amino acids are of great interest because they determine whether SARS-CoV-2 can attach to the cell.

Using computer models, researchers identified amino acids in ACE2 that showed strong interactions with SARS-CoV-2. They observed that in non-susceptible animal species, these amino acids were often different, ultimately disrupting the attachment between the ACE2 protein and the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. This allowed the researchers to make predictions about which animals species are possibly at risk of infection. They estimated that while horses and camels would be vulnerable to infection, cows, goats, and Malayan pangolins would present intermediate susceptibility.

In August, another preprint fromresearchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotiaexamined whether marine wildlife are susceptible to the virus. Using similar modeling methods, these researchers concluded that whales, dolphins, seals, and otters would be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. They suggest that exposure could happen through contaminated sewage entering the sea.

See original here:
DNA found in caterpillar guts points to what they are eating - Massive Science

Just as scientists are rapidly learning how SARS-CoV-2 affects humans, they are also quickly working to understand how it affects other animals. House cats, tigers, golden hamsters, and rhesus monkeys are all susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. And while avian species such as duck and chicken are not, dogs, pigs, and ferrets have shown intermediate susceptibility.

The critical entry point for the virus into our cells is a protein called ACE2, which bonds withthe spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.Animals and humans both expressing ACE2 in their cells, so scientists have been wondering why different species have different SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility, and if it is possible to predict which animals might be at risk.

In a preprint posted on bioRxiv in July, researchers at Vanderbilt Universityapproached this question by comparing the amino acid sequence of ACE2 from different animal species. Amino acids are compounds that combine to form proteins. Inside cells, this amino acid chain folds into a three-dimensional shape. And as a result, some amino acids become hidden, and others exposed. Exposed ACE2 amino acids are of great interest because they determine whether SARS-CoV-2 can attach to the cell.

Using computer models, researchers identified amino acids in ACE2 that showed strong interactions with SARS-CoV-2. They observed that in non-susceptible animal species, these amino acids were often different, ultimately disrupting the attachment between the ACE2 protein and the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. This allowed the researchers to make predictions about which animals species are possibly at risk of infection. They estimated that while horses and camels would be vulnerable to infection, cows, goats, and Malayan pangolins would present intermediate susceptibility.

In August, another preprint fromresearchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotiaexamined whether marine wildlife are susceptible to the virus. Using similar modeling methods, these researchers concluded that whales, dolphins, seals, and otters would be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. They suggest that exposure could happen through contaminated sewage entering the sea.

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What is the COVID-19 polyclonal antibody treatment that President Trump took? - Massive Science

October 03, 2020

STATE COLLEGE, Penn. As Americans hunker down to weather the pandemic this winter at home, nearly every facet of life will remain upended to safeguard against the coronavirus.

Accuweathers team of long-range forecasters, led by Senior Meteorologist Paul Pastelok, released its annual predictions for the upcoming winter season this week. The team has been analyzing global weather patterns and various weather models to project what conditions will unfold across the lower 48 United States this winter, which arrives Dec. 21. Much of the time the setup will be driven by one key factor: La Nia.

La Nia is a phenomenon in which the surface water near the equator of the Pacific Ocean is cooler than normal, the opposite of El Nio when the water in the equatorial Pacific is in a warm phase. This change in the water temperature can have a major influence on the weather patterns all around the globe. According to NOAAs Climate Prediction Center, La Nia officially developed by early September and is forecast to continue through the winter months.

The ongoing La Nia is projected to bring weather conditions similar to what meteorologists expect across the country during a typical La Nia pattern, but there may be a few subtle differences, Pastelok said.

Southeast

The first part of the winter may be the coldest for the southeastern U.S., as a brief shot or two of cold air has the potential to rush down from the north all the way to the Gulf Coast.

Early cold may take a run at the eastern U.S. if snow lays in the Ohio Valley and parts of the Tennessee Valley in December, Pastelok said.

Atlanta, Huntsville, Alabama, Greenville, South Carolina, and Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, could all be hit by a cold snap to kick off the season. Even Floridians may want to make sure to dig out heavier coats from the closet sooner rather than later.

There is a small chance for an early season frost in northern and central Florida perhaps impacting the citrus crop, Pastelok added.

Temperatures are projected to rebound as the season carries on, paving the way for much warmer conditions through the balance of the winter.

Near-record warmth [is predicted] at times in the Southeast, occasionally extending into the mid-Atlantic, Pastelok said.

This extended warmth will be good news for restaurants across the region that have added outdoor seating areas because of the coronavirus pandemic, and could perhaps allow them to utilize the extra space even during the winter months.

Restaurants that do have outdoor seating should still keep a close eye on the weather forecast, not just for temperatures, but also for disruptive storms, especially during the first few weeks of 2021.

Severe thunderstorms may occur more than usual from the central Gulf Coast to the Southeast in late January and February, Pastelok said.

Northeast, Midwest

The winter of 2019-2020 was tame across much of the northeastern U.S. with only a handful of Arctic outbreaks and very little snow to speak of along the Interstate 95 corridor and the upcoming winter could bring some echoes of last winter.

Another overall mild winter is possible for much of the eastern U.S., Pastelok said, referring to how temperatures will compare to the 30-year averages in many places. However, he expects near-normal snowfall across much of New England.

However, the entire season will not be mild all the way through. Instead, the season will be bookended by cold and snowy conditions with a pause in the wintry weather in the middle of the season.

The first waves of chilly Arctic air will set off rounds of lake-effect snow downwind of the Great Lakes and bring opportunities for snow in some of the bigger cities across the region heading into the holiday season.

There is a good chance for a white Christmas in Chicago, perhaps around 30-35% chance at this point, Pastelok said. For Pittsburgh, much of the lake-effect snow could fall north of the city and it may be tough to keep snow on the ground. But from this far out I give a 15-20% chance for a white Christmas in Pittsburgh, but, still, there is a chance.

Plains, Rocky Mountains

The central U.S. experienced a taste of winter as soon as autumn arrived. Meteorological fall began on the first day of September, and just one week later, a winter-like storm dove down across the Plains and northern Rockies, causing temperatures to tumble and delivering snow to the Rockies and some of the foothills.

The middle of the nation may go through some big swings in temperatures, [and] dry and active periods, Pastelok said. Periods of subzero cold can drive south down the Front Range of the Rockies, the central and western Plains.

Snow will be a prominent feature during these big swings, especially over the northern Rockies and into parts of Colorado, which will be beneficial for ski resorts across the region.

There is also the chance for some frequent snowfall in the northern Plains in parts of Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Farther south, the chances for snow will be lower, including part of the southern Plains, the southern Rockies and westward into the Four Corners.

Meanwhile, the central Plains will be in the battleground zone, swinging from bitterly cold conditions to spells of milder weather and then back again in less than a weeks time.

West Coast

Autumn may feel shorter this year across the Pacific Northwest as wintry weather makes an early entrance across the region.

Mountain snow and stormy conditions may arrive in late fall for the Northwest, northern California and northern Rockies, Pastelok said.

Even the Interstate 5 corridor from Medford, Oregon, through Seattle will have several opportunities for accumulating snowfall, potentially even before 2020 draws to a close.

The waves of storms throughout the upcoming months will help to ease the drought conditions across the region, especially in Oregon where more than 60% of the state is in severe drought and over 30% is in an extreme drought.

More importantly, the early arrival of winter storms will spell the conclusion to a historic wildfire season that has charred millions of acres across Washington, Oregon and California.

However, after the flames have smoldered, heavy rains could pose an added danger in the burn scars left behind by the fires, especially in the mountainous terrain.

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RCC partners with Upswing to provide increased academic support services - The Robesonian

MADISON,WI(September 30, 2020) From bone marrow transplants to discoveries about skin cancer to human stem cells, UWMadison has fostered many of the developments that shaped modern medicine. And Robert Golden, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health, is certain that the UW will be home to the developments that shape the future of medicine, too.

The UW is perfectly positioned to build further on our traditions of excellence, he says, because our collaborative environment creates synergies across the domains of basic science, clinical, and translational research, bringing new discoveries from the bench to the bedside and ultimately into communities.

Golden hosted a conversation on the future of medicine as part of the Wisconsin Medicine livestream series on September 29. His guests included Dhanansayan Shanmuganayagam, director of the UWs Biomedical and Genomic Research Group; David Gamm, director of the McPherson Eye Research Institute; and Petros Anagnostopoulos, chief of the pediatric cardiothoracic surgery section at American Family Childrens Hospital. Each of the doctors described new developments in their area.

Organ transplantation is one of the greatest advances in modern medicine, but the need for organs for transplantation is far greater than the available donor organs, said Shanmuganayagam. He noted that more than 109,000 Americans are currently waiting for an organ transplant, and every 20 minutes one of them dies for lack of a donor. How do we plan to solve this crisis? We believe the answer is something called xenotransplantation: the transplant of organs from one species to another.

Shanmuganayagam then described how his group has learned to genetically engineer pigs even engineering a new breed, the Wisconsin Miniature Swine to grow organs that may eventually be transplanted to patients.

Gamm has been involved in using human stem cells to address vision loss and blindness. He believes that stem cells may help address or even reverse diseases of the retina, such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.

We are looking for ways we can use the cells that we grow in the laboratory dish not just as model systems, he says, but actually to replace those cells that have died in the course of a disease, to act sort of as spare parts for the retina and so potentially restore vision.

Anagnostopoulos discussed the expertise of UW surgeons in treating cardiac conditions, particularly among children. For the patient complexity that we see, and the breadth of surgery that we see, our outcomes are statistically superior than they should be expected to be, he said

After the three doctors presented, Golden brought forward questions from some of the hundreds of viewers who watched the event live on YouTube. To hear more from Golden and the members of the panel,view a recording of Wisconsin Medicine. This was the fourth installment in the series, which ran through September.

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Wisconsin Medicine Livestream: The future of medicine - Wisbusiness.com

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New microelectrode-array chips for measuring nerve impulses could reveal how thousands of nerve cells interact with each other.

For over 15 years, ETH Zurich professor Andreas Hierlemann and his group have been developing microelectrode-array chips that can precisely excite nerve cells in cell cultures and to measure electrical cell activity. These developments make it possible to grow nerve cells in cell-culture dishes and use chips at the bottom of the dish to examine each individual cell in a connected nerve tissue in detail.

Alternative methods for conducting such measurements have some clear limitations. They are either very time-consumingbecause contact to each cell has to be individually establishedor they require the use of fluorescent dyes, which influence the behavior of the cells and so the outcome of the experiments.

Now, researchers from Hierlemanns group at the department of biosystems science and engineering of ETH Zurich in Basel, together with Urs Frey and his colleagues from the ETH spin-off MaxWell Biosystems, developed a new generation of microelectrode-array chips. These chips enable detailed recordings of considerably more electrodes than previous systems, which opens up new applications.

As with previous chip generations, the new chips have around 20,000 microelectrodes in an area measuring 2 by 4 millimeters. To ensure that these electrodes pick up the relatively weak nerve impulses, the signals need to be amplified. Examples of weak signals that the scientists want to detect include those of nerve cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). These are currently used in many cell-culture disease models. Another reason to significantly amplify the signals is if the researchers want to track nerve impulses in axons (fine, very thin fibrous extensions of a nerve cell).

However, high-performance amplification electronics take up space, which is why the previous chip was able to simultaneously amplify and read out signals from only 1,000 of the 20,000 electrodes. Although the 1,000 electrodes could be arbitrarily selected, they had to be determined prior to every measurement. This meant that it was possible to make detailed recordings over only a fraction of the chip area during a measurement.

In the new chip, the amplifiers are smaller, permitting the signals of all 20,000 electrodes to be amplified and measured at the same time. However, the smaller amplifiers have higher noise levels. So, to make sure they capture even the weakest nerve impulses, the researchers included some of the larger and more powerful amplifiers into the new chips and employ a nifty trick: they use these powerful amplifiers to identify the points in time at which nerve impulses occur in the cell culture dish. At these time points, they then can search for signals on the other electrodes, and by taking the average of several successive signals, they can reduce the background noise. This procedure yields a clear image of the signal activity over the entire area being measured.

In first experiments, which the researchers report in Nature Communications, they demonstrated their method on human iPS-derived neuronal cells as well as on brain sections, retina pieces, cardiac cells, and neuronal spheroids.

With the new chip, the scientists can produce electrical images of not only the cells but also the extension of their axons, and they can determine how fast a nerve impulse is transmitted to the farthest reaches of the axons.

The previous generations of microelectrode array chips let us measure up to 50 nerve cells. With the new chip, we can perform detailed measurements of more than 1,000 cells in a culture all at once, Hierlemann says.

Such comprehensive measurements are suitable for testing the effects of drugs, meaning that scientists can now conduct research and experiments with human cell cultures instead of relying on lab animals. The technology then also helps to reduce the number of animal experiments.

MaxWell Biosystems is marketing the existing microelectrode technology, which university and industry research groups around the world are using.

Source: ETH Zurich

Visit link:
Measuring chips amplify and record nerve cells - Futurity: Research News

For over 15 years, ETH Professor Andreas Hierlemann and his group have been developing microelectrode-array chips that can be used to precisely excite nerve cells in cell cultures and to measure electrical cell activity. These developments make it possible to grow nerve cells in cell-culture dishes and use chips located at the bottom of the dish to examine each individual cell in a connected nerve tissue in detail. Alternative methods for conducting such measurements have some clear limitations. They are either very time-consuming because contact to each cell has to be individually established or they require the use of fluorescent dyes, which influence the behaviour of the cells and hence the outcome of the experiments.

Now, researchers from Hierlemanns group at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering of ETH Zurich in Basel, together with Urs Frey and his colleagues from the ETH spin-off MaxWell Biosystems, developed a new generation of microelectrode-array chips. These chips enable detailed recordings of considerably more electrodes than previous systems, which opens up new applications.

Stronger signal required

As with previous chip generations, the new chips have around 20,000 microelectrodes in an area measuring 2 by 4 millimetres. To ensure that these electrodes pick up the relatively weak nerve impulses, the signals need to be amplified. Examples of weak signals that the scientists want to detect include those of nerve cells, derived from human pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). These are currently used in many cell-culture disease models. Another reason to significantly amplify the signals is if the researchers want to track nerve impulses in axons (fine, very thin fibrous extensions of a nerve cell).

However, high-performance amplification electronics take up space, which is why the previous chip was able to simultaneously amplify and read out signals from only 1,000 of the 20,000 electrodes. Although the 1,000 electrodes could be arbitrarily selected, they had to be determined prior to every measurement. This meant that it was possible to make detailed recordings over only a fraction of the chip area during a measurement.

Background noise reduced

In the new chip, the amplifiers are smaller, permitting the signals of all 20,000 electrodes to be amplified and measured at the same time. However, the smaller amplifiers have higher noise levels. So, to make sure they capture even the weakest nerve impulses, the researchers included some of the larger and more powerful amplifiers into the new chips and employ a nifty trick: they use these powerful amplifiers to identify the time points, at which nerve impulses occur in the cell culture dish. At these time points, they then can search for signals on the other electrodes, and by taking the average of several successive signals, they can reduce the background noise. This procedure yields a clear image of the signal activity over the entire area being measured.

In first experiments, which the researchers published in the journal Nature Communications, they demonstrated their method on human iPS-derived neuronal cells as well as on brain sections, retina pieces, cardiac cells and neuronal spheroids.

Application in drug development

With the new chip, the scientists can produce electrical images of not only the cells but also the extension of their axons, and they can determine how fast a nerve impulse is transmitted to the farthest reaches of the axons. The previous generations of microelectrode array chips let us measure up to 50 nerve cells. With the new chip, we can perform detailed measurements of more than 1,000 cells in a culture all at once, Hierlemann says.

Such comprehensive measurements are suitable for testing the effects of drugs, meaning that scientists can now conduct research and experiments with human cell cultures instead of relying on lab animals. The technology thus also helps to reduce the number of animal experiments.

The ETH spin-off MaxWell Biosystems is already marketing the existing microelectrode technology, which is now in use around the world by over a hundred research groups at universities and in industry. At present, the company is looking into a potential commercialisation of the new chip.

Story Source:

Materials provided by ETH Zurich. Original written by Fabio Bergamin. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Recording thousands of nerve cell impulses at high resolution - ScienceDaily - Up News Info

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Sentient Science and Croda partner for wind asset life extension - Windtech International

Landfill life extended 15 years with $50K purchase

Spending just $50,000 on new equipment for the Summerland landfill is expected to free up $17 million worth of extra space for trash, council heard Monday.

The expense, which was approved unanimously, will allow staff to buy a set of flat, metal panels similar in design to a garage door that can be placed each night on the active face of the landfill.

That will eliminate the need for the sites operator to spread 15 centimetres of clean fill over the new garbage each night as required by the B.C. government, according to Candace Pilling, the District of Summerlands manager of environmental services.

The daily cover is required to keep birds, bears and wind away from the garbage, she explained, but it also takes up valuable space in the dump.

According to Pilling, the space that will be saved by the steel panels replacing fill will be enough to extend the life of the landfill from 2068 to 2083 by freeing up room for an extra 157,000 metric tonnes of trash, which would attract tipping fees of $17.2 million at todays rate.

The steel panels, which are two metres wide and 10 metres long, were originally scheduled for purchase in 2023, but Pilling recommended council make the purchase as soon as possible.

Manufactured in Revelstoke, the panels are known as the Iron Grizzly Alternate Daily Cover System.

Link:
Landfill getting 15-year life extension with new cover system - pentictonherald.ca

The three-day longevity festival, RAADfest Main Stage presenters for each day, includes actor and activist George Hamilton to discuss strategies for longevity success with Dr. Sandra Kaufmann. More speakers will be joining the RAADcity Expo Stage.

WHAT: Fully produced, 'RAADfest 2020 Online' will be streamed TV quality.

Attendees will receive:

Full access to 3 days of presentations:

*15 hrs of "main stage" content.

*7+ hrs of additional presentations from our sponsors and exhibitors.

Live interaction and Q&As.

Online RAADcity, the Expo:

50+ top longevity companies from around the world are offering advanced products and services.

Discounts and early access to protocols and treatments.

Full presentations' streaming video library for up to 1 year.

WHEN: Friday - Sunday, October 2-4, 2020

WHERE: Online

WHY: Because of COVID 19 pandemic, the yearly world-renowned longevity enthusiast festival, RAADfest, has moved online.

HOW: For more information or to register RAADfest.com

For media inquiry:

https://www.raadfest.com/media-and-press

AGENDA:

Day 1 Friday, Oct 2nd: 10am-3pm (PT):'Super Immunity' speakers including Dr. Amy Killen, Greg Fahy, Dave Asprey and Gordan Lauc.

Day 2 Saturday, Oct 3rd: 10am-3pm (PT):'Age Reversal' speakers including Bill Faloon, George Hamilton, Dr. Sandra Kaufmann, David Kekich and Bill Andrews.

Day 3 Sunday, Oct. 4th from 10am-3pm (PT):'Immortality Forever' speakers including Aubrey de Grey, Dr. Michael Rose, Liz Parrish and Sergey Young

COST: Pre registration $197At the door $247

HOW: Register at RAADfest.com

###

About The Coalition for Radical Life Extension:

The Coalition for Radical Life Extension is rallying like-minded people to come together to stand up for radical life extension and physical immortality. Powered by People Unlimited, the Coalition is a not-for-profit organization reaching out to groups and individuals who already have an interest in radical life extension and physical immortality, to galvanize and focus our energy into a popular movement that is self-sustaining and expansive. This group of early-adopting advocates, numbering in the thousands, is forming a platform for influencing a much broader audience, and ultimately the mainstream.For more info: https://www.rlecoalition.com

RAADfest 2020 invitation, from James Strolehttps://youtu.be/ZQMC44R5mWc

RAADfest 2019 recaphttps://vimeo.com/371920394

Follow the full story here: https://przen.com/pr/33361842

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MEDIA ADVISORY: RAADfest (Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival) 2020 Online, "The Science of Staying Alive" Goes Live on October 2-4...

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Most people can get adequate vitamin C in their diet by eating fruits and vegetables. However, some people take a vitamin C supplement due to dietary restrictions or a medical condition.

Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, is a water-soluble vitamin and antioxidant that is essential for health. It helps the immune system, skin, and bones to function, and combats damage from free radicals, which are molecules that can adversely affect the body.

This article looks at who may benefit from taking vitamin C, how much people need to consume per day, and some of the best vitamin C supplements on the market.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), vitamin C deficiency is rare in the United States. Although most people can get enough vitamin C from fruits and vegetables, others have difficulty getting enough vitamin C from their diet.

People who may be at risk for vitamin C deficiency include:

Anyone concerned that they have a deficiency can ask a doctor for blood tests to see which nutrients they need. A long-term deficiency in vitamin C can lead to scurvy.

In addition to those who have a vitamin C deficiency, some other people may also benefit from consuming more of this nutrient. For example, some evidence suggests vitamin C can reduce the severity and duration of the common cold.

According to the NIH, there is no conclusive evidence that vitamin C has an impact on COVID-19.

According to the NIH, the recommended intake of vitamin C is between 7590 milligrams (mg) per day.

Typically, the small intestine absorbs up to 100 mg of vitamin C from food per day. Once the cells have become saturated with vitamin C, they cannot absorb any more.

However, some people believe that taking very large doses of vitamin C, or mega-dosing is beneficial. This may stem from a 1976 paper that indicated that high-dose vitamin C could prolong the life of people with terminal cancer.

However, more recent studies have failed to repeat this result.

Vitamin C doses of over 2,000 mg per day may cause side effects, such as:

People with particular health conditions or who take certain medications may also need to avoid vitamin C supplements. Conditions include:

Vitamin C may also interact with chemotherapy treatment.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) do not approve Vitamin C products. It is important to discuss taking any new supplement with a doctor.

There are several forms of vitamin C. In supplements, vitamin C usually comes in the form of ascorbic acid. However, some supplements contain other forms, such as sodium ascorbate, calcium ascorbate, or ascorbic acid with bioflavonoids.

According to the NIH, all forms of vitamin C are similarly beneficial.

There are various ways to take vitamin C, including:

Some people may prefer the convenience of swallowing tablets, while others may prefer a powder they can mix into drinks.

People with problems absorbing nutrients may prefer a sublingual supplement, as the body absorbs these in the mouth, rather than in the intestines.

There are many vitamin products on the market, and because they are not FDA-approved, they may vary significantly in purity, ingredients, and dosage. Always buy vitamin C from a reputable company and ensure the products undergo third-party testing.

The products listed below

Please note that the author of this article has not tested these products. All information is research-based.

Pure Encapsulations vitamin C liquid provides 1,000 mg of vitamin C in one teaspoon (tsp) and comes in a pleasant citrus flavor.

According to the company, it contains non-GMO ingredients and is suitable for vegans and vegetarians.

This product contains liposomal vitamin C, which means tiny bubbles of oil contain the vitamin C.

According to a 2020 study, the gut finds this form of vitamin C easier to absorb. However, this is likely a factor in the price, which is higher than other brands.

The company are NSF- and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)-certified, and they have their ingredients tested for contaminants.

Pure Encapsulations Liposomal Vitamin C is available for purchase online.

Some people find taking ascorbic acid irritates their stomach. Buffered vitamin C is a less acidic form of the nutrient, which may help reduce adverse effects.

One serving of this powder provides 4,000 mg of vitamin C. This dose is very high, twice that of the upper limit the NIH recommend. However, as this product comes in a powder, people can lower the dose to a more moderate level by using smaller amounts of powder.

Life Extension are also NSF- and GMP-certified and produce a Certificate of Analysis for every product they make.

Life Extension Buffered Vitamin C Powder is available for purchase online.

People who do not like swallowing tablets may prefer a chewable vitamin. This product delivers 500 mg of vitamin C per chewable tablet. A person can take 12 per day.

The product is free of common allergens and suitable for vegans. It does contain some sugar and natural sweeteners, although this only totals 1 g per dose. The tablets have a natural orange flavor.

According to the website, NOW exceeds GMP standards and tests all raw ingredients for safety and purity.

NOW Supplements Orange Chewable Vitamin C-500 is available for purchase online.

Eating more fruits and vegetables is the best way for someone to increase their vitamin C intake naturally. The NIH suggest:

Some companies also fortify their breakfast cereals with added vitamin C.

High heat, water-based cooking methods, and prolonged storage can destroy some of the foods vitamin C content. The NIH suggest lightly steaming or microwaving vegetables to retain more of their nutrients.

Vitamin C deficiency can be fatal if left unaddressed or untreated. Someone should see their doctor if they have symptoms that may indicate a vitamin C deficiency. These include:

People should also consult their doctor before taking vitamin C, particularly if they have a medical condition, are pregnant, or take any medications.

Most people get enough vitamin C by eating a varied diet that includes fruits and vegetables. However, some people may need a supplement.

All forms of vitamin C work in much the same way, but always buy from a reputable seller, and consider the dosage, quality, and price point before buying a product.

Too much vitamin C may cause side effects.

Some people should not take vitamin C, so it is best to consult a doctor before starting any supplement.

See the rest here:
3 of the best vitamin C supplements: What to look for - Medical News Today

Jobs will be very different in the next few decades. Emerging technologies and decade-defining problems will create job titles that you have never seen before. According to research presented by the World Economic Forum, over the next ten years,1.2 billion employees worldwide will be affected by the adaptation of automation technologies and AI.

It is believed that this will involve up to50% of the world economy and will disrupt $14.6 trillion in wages. However, this might not be a bad thing. This disruption could lead to a new range of jobs in various sectors, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Most of the jobs of today will not just disappear. Instead, many of them will likely evolve to match an automated or digital world. Beyond AI and automation though, new opportunities in fields like space tourism, drone technologies, social media, 3D printing, and IoT opportunities will emerge for those interested in these fields. Your hobby for desktop 3D printing could be a viable skill.

How does "3D Printing Food Specialist" Sound? Or, maybe you can take your aerospace engineering degree with a minor in off-planet hospitality andbecome a space tourism guide. Immediate threats to the planet like global warming will require Climate Reversal Specialists.

The next decade's jobs will correlate directly not just with automation but with the current challenges and trends directly weaving their ways into our everyday lives. Today we are going to look at some future jobs that may well become commonplace in the coming decades. Jobs that may seem like they belong in an episode of Westworld.

Space tourism could well become a massive market. The same way you plan a trip to a foreign country, you may soon be able to buy roundtrip tickets to a hotel off-world. As it sounds, space tourism is space travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes. Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic all have plans to bring ordinary people into space. There is even a space hotel in the pipeline.

According to MarketWatch, the value ofspace tourism is expected to reach about $21 billionby the end of 2026. In this futuristic job, you would educate space tourists on gravity, the moon, the history of space, Mars, and the planets beyond, all while on a spacecraft, in orbit around our planet, or in a space station.

You have heard it countless times before. "What you post on the internet is there forever." Unwanted data, personal information, or embarrassing photos of you could still be floating around the internet without you noticing.

Though millennials and generation Z seem to have come to terms with this fact, there are still many people who would like to keep any embarrassing public and private moments offline. Enter "Digital Removalist."

Digital removalists will be in high demand in the future as more and more people decide to protect their data, remove their digital footprint, or embarrassing information that could jeopardize future opportunities.

That's right. We can 3D print food. Start-ups are popping- up worldwide that are dedicated to creating delicious meals using specialized 3D printers that are not much more complicated than the desktop FDM printer used at home. However, the process of creating 3D printed food is not easy.

You have to find ways to not only create edible (and hopefully delicious) filaments but you need to do it in an economical way that works in tandem with the engineering of a 3D printing machine. In this futuristic job, you will be part 3D printing engineering expert, part top chef, and part chemist, coming up with recipes and new 3D printing techniques that match customer tastes or biological needs.

Many researchers and scientists believe that humanity will find a way to extend their lives by a few hundred years in the next few decades. You may even be able to hire a life extension technician to help you get there.

They would work with you using a combination of technology and cutting edge medicine to make you feel and look decades younger.

Currently, it is believed that 5.8 million cybercrimes happen each year. The future job market will need even more lawyers who specialize in issues on the internet.

With a cybercrime happening every 45 minutes, cyber law will become a booming industry, mixing law with extensive social media policy knowledge.

Not all future jobs will share the primary goal of maximizing the profits of shareholders. In the future job market, companies will try to both make money and find ways to do good. Regenerative Change Officers would be social entrepreneurs looking at ways to move their company beyond sustainability and focus on making the world a better place.

They will be involved in marketing profitable products and services that aim to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change intoplanetary balance.

Amid the pandemic, we have already seen the rise of digital education. This has led to a lot of questions surrounding education, such as whether students and teachers always need to be physically present.

Teachers specializing in techniques for the virtual classroom may soon become commonplace. Using mixed reality and virtual reality, teachers could appear in the classroom anywhere in the world, and could even teach thousands of students at once.

Jobs like this are already entering the market. Companies like Uneeq are creating digital humans in place of the digital customer service bots that many dread talking to. In this futuristic job, you would work to create digital humans that can be more personable with customers.

Your role as Machine Personality Designer would be to create highly-tailored digital humans based on data and powered by artificial intelligence. These digital humans would share almost identical personalities to customers and have similar tastes, to ensure a more smooth customer service experience.

Automation will be everywhere. So it makes sense that one of the top jobs in many future companies will center around automation. Expected to be one of the most sought after jobs on the market, Chief Automation Officers will be experts in AI and robotics, using these emerging technologies to do everything from sorting mail to creating efficient automotive assembly systems.

They will help design better autonomous vehicles, in-home robots, and even smart cities. Expect to see this future job just about everywhere. This job will play an important role in bridging the gap between businesses and the IT process.

Sherlock Holmes, but in 2025. As data becomes ever more valuable, it will become increasingly important for companies to be able to interpret and protect their own data and use it to answer major operational questions. This role will require the development of programs that can sort through large data sets and generate answers to business questions.

This potential new breed of engineer-scientist will play a vital role in tackling the challenges of global warming. This future job will call upon Climate Change Reversal Specialists to use and develop emerging technologies and innovative engineering techniques to protect and rebuild ecosystems around the world impacted by climate change, such as rainforests, ocean beds, coral reefs, and urban and rural areas.

The current space junk problem is an existential threat that could drastically impact everything from our global communications to our space program. As of 2019, there are estimated to be over 128 million pieces of debris smaller than 1cm floating above our Earth. Simultaneously, there are approximately 900,000 pieces from one to ten cm in size, while the current number of individual pieces of large debris is approximately 34,000.

Traveling at speeds up to17,500 mph, space debris is potentially very dangerous, and could damage spacecraft and satellites, and even jeopardize the lives of astronauts and future space tourists. Space junk recyclers would help to identify and track the orbital locations of this space junk and develop cost-effective methods to remove it from orbit.

Drones are set to become a common and effective means of delivering goods and packages to people all around the world. The FAA predicts that835,000 drone aircraft will be hitting the U.S skies by 2023. Aside from delivery, commercial drones will be used for research, pilot training, filming, building inspections, and a wide range of other activities.

Companies like Amazon and Google are working on launching drone projects for public use. Someone is going to need to help get all of these drones off the ground. In this industry, drone managers will be trained to organize, maintain, and direct fleets of drones using AI-driven logistics systems.

Retail and e-commerce experiences will need to find various new ways to attract customers to their store, to keep them engaged while there, and, of course, to get them to buy something.

Gamification could become a powerful tool in their arsenal. Gamification Marketing Specialists will work hard to keep customers engaged and entertained using well-thought-out, data-driven interactive experiences based on detailed knowledge of customer psychology and behavior.

AR technology is already here. Nevertheless, the adoption of the technology has been fairly slow. But all of that could change in the near future. AR glasses by companies like Apple and Facebook could breathe new life into augmented reality and mixed reality development.

AR is already starting to pop in retail stores, on our phones, in gaming, and on our computers. AR is still very much in its early stages, but the next decade could see more AR tools and applications. In this future job, augmented reality developers will create AR medical training experiences, remote classrooms, design and modeling applications, and, of course, augmented gaming experiences.

Which future job sounds the most exciting?

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15 Futuristic Jobs That Will Be Common in the Next Few Decades - Interesting Engineering

Going through menopause is a major turning point in a woman's life, and one that has implications for both her physical and mental health. In other words, there's far more to the experiences a woman has during this transitional life stage than just the fact that it signifies the end of her childbearing years. That's why Life Extension, a health and wellness research site, conducted a survey of menopausal and postmenopausal women about their experiences with various symptoms, food cravings, and weight gain. The average age of respondents was 50 years old, with a standard deviation of 14 years. Based on the responses of 512 women, these are the five worst symptoms of menopause. And for more female-focused health information, check out The No. 1 Sign of Poor Health No Woman Should Ever Ignore, Experts Say.

Women who experienced the symptom: 43 percent

Women who said it was the worst symptom: 9 percent

And for more things to keep your eye on as you get older, check out 30 Health Issues Every Woman Over 30 Should Start Looking Out For.

Women who experienced the symptom: 37 percent

Women who said it was the worst symptom: 12 percent

Women who experienced the symptom: 50 percent

Women who said it was the worst symptom: 14 percent

And for more things you should know about your health, but don't, check out 60 Percent of Women Don't Know These Key Cancer Symptoms, Study Says.

Women who experienced the symptom: 58 percent

Women who said it was the worst symptom: 16 percent

Women who experienced the symptom: 59 percent

Women who said it was the worst symptom: 30 percent

And for more up-to-date health information delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.

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The Majority of Women Say This Is the Worst Symptom of Menopause - Best Life

Overview for Antioxidant Supplement Market Helps in providing scope and definitions, Key Findings, Growth Drivers, and Various Dynamics.

The Antioxidant Supplement market is expected to grow from USD X.X million in 2020 to USD X.X million by 2026, at a CAGR of X.X% during the forecast period. The global Antioxidant Supplement market report is a comprehensive research that focuses on the overall consumption structure, development trends, sales models and sales of top countries in the global Antioxidant Supplement market. The report focuses on well-known providers in the global Antioxidant Supplement industry, market segments, competition, and the macro environment.

Under COVID-19 Outbreak, how the Antioxidant Supplement Industry will develop is also analyzed in detail in Chapter 1.7 of the report., In Chapter 2.4, we analyzed industry trends in the context of COVID-19., In Chapter 3.5, we analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on the product industry chain based on the upstream and downstream markets., In Chapters 6 to 10 of the report, we analyze the impact of COVID-19 on various regions and major countries., In chapter 13.5, the impact of COVID-19 on the future development of the industry is pointed out.

A holistic study of the market is made by considering a variety of factors, from demographics conditions and business cycles in a particular country to market-specific microeconomic impacts. The study found the shift in market paradigms in terms of regional competitive advantage and the competitive landscape of major players.

Download PDF Sample of Antioxidant Supplement Market report @ https://www.arcognizance.com/enquiry-sample/1334590

Key players in the global Antioxidant Supplement market covered in Chapter 4:, Puritan, GNC, Jarrow Formulas, Bulkpowders, NOW, Biocare, Life Extension, Vibrant Health, Cytoplan, AST R-ALA

In Chapter 11 and 13.3, on the basis of types, the Antioxidant Supplement market from 2015 to 2026 is primarily split into:, Medical Grade, Food Grade

In Chapter 12 and 13.4, on the basis of applications, the Antioxidant Supplement market from 2015 to 2026 covers:, Medical, Food, Cosmetics, Others

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Geographically, the detailed analysis of consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate, historic and forecast (2015-2026) of the following regions are covered in Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13:, North America (Covered in Chapter 6 and 13), United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe (Covered in Chapter 7 and 13), Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Others, Asia-Pacific (Covered in Chapter 8 and 13), China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, Others, Middle East and Africa (Covered in Chapter 9 and 13), Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Others, South America (Covered in Chapter 10 and 13), Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, Others

Years considered for this report:, Historical Years: 2015-2019, Base Year: 2019, Estimated Year: 2020, Forecast Period: 2020-2026

Some Point of Table of Content:

Chapter One: Report Overview

Chapter Two: Global Market Growth Trends

Chapter Three: Value Chain of Antioxidant Supplement Market

Chapter Four: Players Profiles

Chapter Five: Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Analysis by Regions

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Chapter Six: North America Antioxidant Supplement Market Analysis by Countries

Chapter Seven: Europe Antioxidant Supplement Market Analysis by Countries

Chapter Eight: Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Market Analysis by Countries

Chapter Nine: Middle East and Africa Antioxidant Supplement Market Analysis by Countries

Chapter Ten: South America Antioxidant Supplement Market Analysis by Countries

Chapter Eleven: Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Segment by Types

Chapter Twelve: Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Segment by Applications12.1 Global Antioxidant Supplement Sales, Revenue and Market Share by Applications (2015-2020)12.1.1 Global Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Market Share by Applications (2015-2020)12.1.2 Global Antioxidant Supplement Revenue and Market Share by Applications (2015-2020)12.2 Medical Sales, Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2020)12.3 Food Sales, Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2020)12.4 Cosmetics Sales, Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2020)12.5 Others Sales, Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2020)

Chapter Thirteen: Antioxidant Supplement Market Forecast by Regions (2020-2026) continue

List of tablesList of Tables and FiguresTable Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Size Growth Rate by Type (2020-2026)Figure Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Share by Type in 2019 & 2026Figure Medical Grade FeaturesFigure Food Grade FeaturesTable Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Size Growth by Application (2020-2026)Figure Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Share by Application in 2019 & 2026Figure Medical DescriptionFigure Food DescriptionFigure Cosmetics DescriptionFigure Others DescriptionFigure Global COVID-19 Status OverviewTable Influence of COVID-19 Outbreak on Antioxidant Supplement Industry DevelopmentTable SWOT AnalysisFigure Porters Five Forces AnalysisFigure Global Antioxidant Supplement Market Size and Growth Rate 2015-2026Table Industry NewsTable Industry PoliciesFigure Value Chain Status of Antioxidant SupplementFigure Production Process of Antioxidant SupplementFigure Manufacturing Cost Structure of Antioxidant SupplementFigure Major Company Analysis (by Business Distribution Base, by Product Type)Table Downstream Major Customer Analysis (by Region)Table Puritan ProfileTable Puritan Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table GNC ProfileTable GNC Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table Jarrow Formulas ProfileTable Jarrow Formulas Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table Bulkpowders ProfileTable Bulkpowders Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table NOW ProfileTable NOW Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table Biocare ProfileTable Biocare Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table Life Extension ProfileTable Life Extension Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table Vibrant Health ProfileTable Vibrant Health Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table Cytoplan ProfileTable Cytoplan Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Table AST R-ALA ProfileTable AST R-ALA Production, Value, Price, Gross Margin 2015-2020Figure Global Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Global Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) and Growth (2015-2020)Table Global Antioxidant Supplement Sales by Regions (2015-2020)Table Global Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Regions (2015-2020)Table Global Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) by Regions (2015-2020)Table Global Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Regions (2015-2020)Table Global Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Regions in 2015Table Global Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Regions in 2019Figure North America Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Europe Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Middle East and Africa Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure South America Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure North America Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) and Growth (2015-2020)Table North America Antioxidant Supplement Sales by Countries (2015-2020)Table North America Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries (2015-2020)Figure North America Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries in 2015Figure North America Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries in 2019Table North America Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) by Countries (2015-2020)Table North America Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries (2015-2020)Figure North America Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries in 2015Figure North America Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries in 2019Figure United States Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Canada Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Mexico Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth (2015-2020)Figure Europe Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) Growth (2015-2020)Table Europe Antioxidant Supplement Sales by Countries (2015-2020)Table Europe Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries (2015-2020)Figure Europe Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries in 2015Figure Europe Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries in 2019Table Europe Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) by Countries (2015-2020)Table Europe Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries (2015-2020)Figure Europe Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries in 2015Figure Europe Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries in 2019Figure Germany Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure UK Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure France Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Italy Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Spain Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Russia Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) and Growth (2015-2020)Table Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Sales by Countries (2015-2020)Table Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries (2015-2020)Figure Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries in 2015Figure Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Sales Market Share by Countries in 2019Table Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) by Countries (2015-2020)Table Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries (2015-2020)Figure Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries in 2015Figure Asia-Pacific Antioxidant Supplement Revenue Market Share by Countries in 2019Figure China Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Japan Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure South Korea Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Australia Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure India Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Southeast Asia Antioxidant Supplement Sales and Growth Rate (2015-2020)Figure Middle East and Africa Antioxidant Supplement Revenue ($) and Growth (2015-2020)continue

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NOTE: Our report does take into account the impact of coronavirus pandemic and dedicates qualitative as well as quantitative sections of information within the report that emphasizes the impact of COVID-19.

As this pandemic is ongoing and leading to dynamic shifts in stocks and businesses worldwide, we take into account the current condition and forecast the market data taking into consideration the micro and macroeconomic factors that will be affected by the pandemic.

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Impact Of Covid-19 on Antioxidant Supplement Market 2020 Industry Challenges, Business Overview and Forecast Research Study 2026 - The Daily Chronicle

Oct 3rd 2020

IN 1981 PETER and Rosemary Grant, a husband-and-wife team of evolutionary biologists, spotted something odd on Daphne Major. Every year for the previous decade they had travelled from Princeton University to this island in the Galpagos, to study its three endemic tanager species, part of a group known colloquially as Darwins finches. On this occasion their eyes were drawn to an unusual male that sported dark feathers and sang a unique song. Genetic analysis later identified him as a large cactus finch, probably blown in from Espaola, another part of the archipelago that is over 100km away.

Intrigued, the Grants followed the castaway as he explored his new home. They watched him mate with a local female medium ground finch. That produced five fit, healthy offspring. Those offspring were also surprisingly sexually selective. A single male excepted, they and their descendants mated only among themselvesand they have continued to do so ever since.

Despite this heavy inbreeding, the hybrids (two of which are pictured above) have been successful. They have carved out a niche in which they use their size and their deep beaks to exploit the large woody fruits of the Jamaican feverplant, which grows locally. They have, to all intents and purposes, become another species of Darwin finch, of which 13 were previously recognised. Though they do not yet have a Latinised scientific name, they are known to all as the Big Bird lineage.

This story would once have been considered deeply implausible. Evolutions orthodox narrative does not suggest that hybridisation is how new animal species emerge. But, as genetic testing has proliferated, biologists have been confronted with an unexpected fact. Hybrids are not an evolutionary bug. They are a feature.

That knowledge is changing the way people think about evolution. The neat family trees envisaged by Charles Darwin in one of his early notebooks (see picture below) are turning into webs, and the primacy of mutation in generating the variation which natural selection then winnows is being challenged. The influx of genes accompanying hybridisation creates such variation tooand the harder people look, the more important that seems to get. Hybridisation also offers shortcuts on the long march to speciation that do not depend on natural selection at all. As the example of the Big Bird lineage shows, instead of taking millennia to emerge, a new species can appear almost overnight.

In truth, all this had already been recognised for simple organisms like bacteria. These exchange genes promiscuously between both more and less related individuals. But bacteria were unknown when Darwin came up with natural selection, and, ever since then, the subject of speciation has been dominated by examples drawn from animals and plants. To recognise that what is true for bacteria is also true for these multicellular organisms has profound implications, not least for how human beings understand their own origins. It seems appropriate, then, that the birds whose diversity helped inspire Darwin still have evolutionary tales to tell.

The conventional view of evolution is that mutations happen at random. Maladaptive ones are then eliminated by competitive pressure while adaptive ones proliferate. The result, over long periods of time and assisted by populations sometimes being split up by external circumstances, is change which eventually crystallises into new and separate species.

That process does leave the door open to hybrids. The genomes of closely related species may remain sufficiently similar to produce viable offspring. But these genes often fit together less well than those of parents from the same species. As a consequence, even viable hybrids are frequently infertile (think mules) and are also at higher risk of developmental and other types of illnesses. In fact, infertility in male hybrids is so common that it has a nameHaldanes rule. This sort of thing was enough to persuade most of Darwins 20th-century disciples that the need to avoid hybridisation was actually a driving force which caused natural selection to erect reproductive barriers between incipient species, and thus encouraged speciation.

There is, though, another way of looking at hybridisation. Mixing the traits of two parent species might actually leave their hybrid offspring better off. This is called hybrid vigour, or heterosis. The interplay of two species genes can even produce traits displayed by neither parent. This is known as transgressive segregation and the resulting hybrid may be surprisingly well adapted to a completely new niche, as was the case with the Big Birds.

Both the maleficent and beneficent effects of hybridisation are real. The question is, which wins out more often in practice? In plants, it is frequently the beneficent. This is a consequence of plants unusually malleable genetics. The nuclear genomes of complex organisms (animals, plants, fungi and single-celled organisms such as amoebae) are divided into bundles of DNA called chromosomes. Such organisms are generally either haploid or diploid, meaning that each cell nucleus contains either one or two copies of every chromosome. Human beings are diploid. They have 23 chromosomal pairs, for a total of 46 individual chromosomes. But there are exceptions. Plants, for instance, are frequently polyploidmeaning that each nucleus contains copies in greater multiples than two. To take one example, Californian coastal redwoods have six copies. Since redwood cell nuclei have 11 distinct types of chromosome, they host a total of 66 chromosomes altogether.

Sometimes, polyploidy is a result of an organisms genome spontaneously doubling. Often, though, it is a consequence of hybridisation, with the chromosomes of both parents ending up in a single nucleus. However it arises, polyploidy provides spare copies of genes for natural selection to work on while other versions of them continue with their original function. And if it is also the result of hybridisation, it brings the additional possibilities of heterosis and transgressive segregation.

On top of this, by changing an organisms chromosome count polyploidy has another pertinent effect. It creates an instant barrier to breeding with either parent species. That gives a new, incipient species a chance to establish itself without being reabsorbed into one of the parental populations. The results can be spectacular. Recent evidence suggests, for example, that hybridisation between two plant species in the distant past, followed by a simple doubling of the number of chromosomes in their offspring, may be responsible for much of the extraordinary diversity in flowering plants that is seen today.

Plants seem to be easy beneficiaries of hybridisation. For many animals, howeverand for mammals in particularextra chromosomes serve not to enhance things, but to disrupt them. Why, is not completely clear. Cell division in animals seems more easily confounded by superfluous chromosomes than it is in plants, so this may be a factor. Plants also have simpler cells, which are more able to accommodate extra chromosomes. Whatever the details, animal hybrids appear to feel the effects of genetic incompatibility far more acutely than do plants, and are therefore less able to benefit from heterosis. Evolutionary biologists therefore assumed for a long time that hybridisation played a negligible role in animal evolutionand there was little evidence to suggest otherwise.

Advances in DNA sequencing have changed that by letting people look under the bonnet of evolutionary history. This has uncovered a steady trickle of animals breathed into life entirely by hybrid speciation. They include some familiar names. The European bison, for instance, is the result of hybridisation, over 120,000 years ago, between two now extinct speciesthe ice-age steppe bison and the auroch. The latter were the wild antecedents of modern domestic cattle, and survived in Jaktorow Forest, in Poland, until 1627.

Something similar is true of the Atlantic Clymene dolphin. Genetic analysis has revealed that this cetacean, which roams the briny between west Africa, Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico, owes its existence to a hybridisation that happened between two globe-trotting others, the striped dolphin and the spinner dolphin.

At least one hybrid animal, moreover, traces its ancestry to three species. Genetic analysis shows that Artibeus schwartzi, a Caribbean fruit bat, is a result of hybridisation, within the past 30,000 years, of the Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis), the South American flat-faced fruit-eating bat (Artibeus planirostris) and a third, as yet unidentified animal, which researchers speculate may now be extinct.

It also appears that, as in the case of flowering plants, hybridisation can fuel explosive radiations of novel animals. The best-known example is the case of the cichlids of Africas Great Lakesparticularly Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. Great Lake cichlids are a group of thousands of closely related fish, famous for their panoply of shapes, sizes and colours (see picture). Each is adapted to a different depth and ecological niche.

Cichlids evolutionary history has long puzzled biologists. Lake Victoria, in particular, comes and goes with the climate. Its current instantiation is less than 15,000 years old. In evolutionary terms this is the blink of an eye, but in that time the lakes cichlids have diversified into more than 500 species.

The reason is hybridisation. Using genetic analysis to place Lake Victorias cichlids within the broader cichlid family tree, researchers have discovered that they descend from a tryst between two distinct parental lineages, one that swam in the Congo and the other in the Nile.

The value of being such a genetic mosaic is apparent from the history of one of the best-studied cichlid genes, which encodes a protein called long-wave-sensitive opsin that is found in the retina of the eye. This protein determines the eyes sensitivity to red light. That matters because red-light levels decline steeply in deeper water. Consequently, fish which live at different depths need eyes that are tuned differently from one another.

The cichlid lineage from the Congo had eyes which were optimised for clear, shallow water. Nile-lineage vision was more attuned to the deep and murky. Hybrids were able to chop and change these genetic variants to produce a range of sensitivities to light. This let them colonise the full depth of the water column in Lake Victoria as it developed. The new lake, for its part, offered the cichlids a host of empty ecological niches to fill. The result was a sudden and explosive process dubbed combinatorial speciation.

Elsewhere in the natural world, combinatorial speciation seems to have contributed to the striking diversity of Sporophila, a genus of 41 Neotropical songbirds, and of the munias, mannikins and silverbills of the genus Lonchura, a group of 31 estrildid finches that ranges across Africa and South-East Asia. Nor is it just in vertebrates that this phenomenon rears its head. Heliconius, a genus of 39 flamboyant New World butterflies, also owes its eye-catching diversity to combinatorial speciation.

These findings muddy Darwins concept of speciation as a slow and gradual process. Biologists now know that in the right circumstances, and with the help of hybridisation, new species can emerge and consolidate themselves in a mere handful of generations. That is an important amendment to evolutionary theory.

It is nevertheless true that, for animals, hybrid speciation in its full form remains rare. It requires an unlikely congruence of factors to keep a new hybrid population reproductively isolated from both parental species. The survival of the Galpagos Big Bird lineage, for example, involved physical isolation from one and strong sexual selection against the other.

More commonly, an incipient hybrid population is reabsorbed by one or both parental species before it can properly establish itself. The result is a percolation of genes from one species to another, rather than a full hybrid. This is called introgressive hybridisationor, simply, introgression. DNA analysis of a long list of closely related animals shows that this version of hybridisation is far more common than the full form. It may even be ubiquitous.

The North American grey wolf, for example, owes its gene for melanismthe deep black fur displayed by some wolvesto introgression from domesticated dogs brought 14,000 years ago from Asia by Americas first human settlers. In wolves that inhabit forests this gene has undergone strong positive selection, suggesting it is adaptive. The most obvious explanation is that melanism provides better camouflage in the stygian depths of North Americas woodlands. Alternatively, female wolves may simply prefer their males tall, dark and handsome.

Pantherathe genus to which most big cats belongis yet more impressive in the scope of its introgressive entanglement. It has five members: lions, tigers, leopards, snow leopards and jaguars. These have long been known to interbreed successfully in captivity, yielding crosses called ligers (lion x tiger), jaglions (jaguar x lion) and so on. But recent analysis shows that this has also happened in the wild. Researchers have identified at least six past introgressive episodes in the genus, with every member involved in at least one of them.

The most promiscuous of the five appears to be the lion. Gene variants have percolated between lions and tigers, lions and snow leopards, and lions and jaguars. There is also evidence that at least some of this gene flow has been adaptive. Three lion genes incorporated into jaguar genomes are known to have been strongly selected for. Two of these are involved in visionspecifically, they help guide the development of the optic nerve.

Genetic analysis also reveals a long history of hybridisation between polar bears and grizzlies, the largest of their brown bear cousins. It is not yet clear whether this has had adaptive valuebut it may soon have a chance to prove itself. As climate change warms the polar bears Arctic home, the species may have to adjust rapidly. A splash of grizzly, a group used to more temperate climes, might help that happen.

The best-studied case of introgression in animals is, though, closer to home than wolves, big cats and bears. It is looking back at you from the mirror. The most up-to-date evidence suggests that Homo sapiens arose more than 315,000 years ago from gene flow between a series of interlinked population groups spread across Africa. Whether these populations were different enough to be considered distinct species is still debated. In the grasslands of the African Pleistocene, however, these ancestral groups were not alone. Their world was interspersed with a menagerie of other hominins. And interspecies mating seems to have been rife.

Several members of this human menagerie appear to have descended from Homo heidelbergensis, a species that spread through eastern and southern Africa around 700,000 years ago before crossing the Middle East into Europe and Asia. This speciesa possible ancestor of the progenitor groups of Homo sapiensalso gave rise to at least two others, the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and the Denisovans (Homo denisova). The former survived in Europe until 28,000 years ago, while the latter, an Asiatic group, lasted until roughly 50,000 years ago.

Other hominin species around at the time emerged directly from Homo erectus, a more primitive creature that was also the ancestor of Homo heidelbergensis and which, a million years beforehand, had blazed a similar transcontinental expansionary path to that of heidelbergensis. The local descendants of erectus were largely displaced by heidelbergensis when it arrived. But some holdouts survived in corners of the Old World that heidelbergensis never reached. These included the islands of Flores in Indonesia and Luzon in the Philippines. It was here that diminutive Homo floresiensis and Homo luzonensisthe island hobbitslasted, like the Denisovans, until 50,000 years ago. There were probably isolated descendants of even older cousins too. At least one is known, Homo naledi, which predated the emergence of Homo erectus and still roamed southern Africa around 230,000 years ago.

This grand hominin circus ultimately came to an abrupt end. The record in Africa is opaque. But in Europe, Asia and Oceania it is clear that the arrival of modern humans coincided with a great vanishing of local hominins. Whether through disease, competition for scarce resources or perhaps even genocide, a few thousand years of contact with Homo sapiens was enough to snuff out every other hominin species.

Even a few millennia, though, proved enough for Homo sapiens to get to know its cousins intimately. The record of these romantic entanglements remains in the DNA of almost everyone alive today. In 2010 a team led by Svante Pbo of the Max Planck Institutes campus in Leipzig published the first draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome. This led to the discovery that stretches of Neanderthal DNA constitute 1-4% of the modern human genome in all populations outside sub-Saharan Africa. That is consistent with a string of hybridising liaisons in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia from around 65,000 years ago.

Neanderthal inheritance helped Homo sapiens adapt to the demands of the environments of these unfamiliar places. There seems to have been strong selection, for example, in favour of Neanderthal genes related to skin and hair growth. These include bnc 2, a gene linked to skin pigment and freckling that is still present in two-thirds of Europeans. There also appears to have been selection for Neanderthal-derived genes that deal with pathogens. Some govern the immune systems ability to detect bacterial infections. Others encode proteins which interact with viruses.

The Denisovans, and their contribution to Homo sapiens, were another of Dr Pbos discoveries. In 2009 one of his team sequenced DNA from a fossil finger bone excavated from Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. This bone turned out to belong to a previously unknown species that was then named after the cave it was found in. Physical specimens of this species remain rare. Examination of living people, however, reveals that stretches of Denisovan DNA make up 3-6% of the genome of contemporary Papuans, Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians. Many Chinese and Japanese also carry Denisovan DNA, albeit at lower rates.

As with Neanderthals, this inheritance has brought advantages. The Denisovan version of a gene called epas1 modulates production of red blood cells, which carry oxygen. This helps modern Tibetans to survive at high altitudes. Denisovan tbx 15 and wars 2 similarly help Inuit survive the harsh cold of the Arctic by regulating the amount of metabolic heat they produce.

That the Denisovans could lurk in modern human DNA yet leave so little fossil trace has caused geneticists to wonder what other ghosts they might find. The genomes of sub-Saharan Africans, in particular, reveal evidence of at least one further entanglement. In 2012 a genomic analysis of members of the Baka, Hadza and Sandawe, three groups of people of ancient lineage, suggested an archaic introgression. In 2016 a deeper analysis focused on the Baka pinpointed this to within the past 30,000 years. This February, a study of members of two other groups, the Yoruba and Mende, confirmed that between 2% and 19% of their genomes can be traced to an unidentified archaic species. Whether this is the same as the one which has contributed to the Baka, Hadza and Sandawe is unclear, but it appears to have diverged from the line leading directly to Homo sapiens not long before the Neanderthals and Denisovansan African Neanderthal, if you will.

The same genetic tools have revealed deeper ghosts, too. Denisovans show signs of hybridisation with a superarchaic lineageperhaps Homo erectus itself. This makes up 1% of the species genome. About 15% of this superarchaic inheritance has, in turn, been passed on to modern humans. There is even evidence of a minute genetic contribution to African populations by a similarly superarchaic relative.

To be human, then, is to be a multispecies mongrel. As the example of the big cats in particular shows, though, Homo sapiens is not, in this, an exception. Hybridisation, once seen as a spear-carrier in evolutions grand theatre, is rapidly becoming a star of the show. Meanwhile, Darwins idea of a simple, universal family tree is relegated to the wings.

In its place, some experts now prefer the idea of a tangled bush of interconnected branches. But this, too, is an imperfect comparison. A more fitting analogy is a frayed rope. Species are braided from individual strands. Where evolution proceeds in an orthodox Darwinian manner, braids unravel, strands split and new species result. But the rope does not fray neatly. Filaments of introgression criss-cross from braid to braid and, occasionally, two tangle to form a new braid altogether. This is a more complex conception of evolutionary history, but also a richer one. Few things in life are simplewhy should life itself be?

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Match and mix"

Link:
How hybrids have upturned evolutionary theory - The Economist

Rita Colwell in 2011. Photo: Chaman Sond/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

From flipping through my brothers chemistry book, drawing chemical bonds on walls to doing lab experiments and getting a trinitrotoluene tattoo on my leg my love for chemistry is a famous fact among family and friends. Sadly, I gave up on that love quite early in my life when my father tried to get me to become a gynaecologist.

Anguished, I gravitated towards the social sciences instead, subsequently giving rise to my interest in science and feminism. I found here a sense of self-gratification, regret and hope in unravelling the lives of women scientists, their struggles and accomplishments.

When I started reading A Lab of Ones Own, dj vu crept in; I was reminded of books like Hypatias Heritage by Margaret Alic, various biographies of Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock and other women scientists and of course stories about the likes of Anna Mani in India. Even though they lived through different times, cultures and contexts, gender-based discrimination was so common in their lives that it was both the norm and the normal.

Even today, this is true. However, as A Lab of Ones Own asks, how can we keep the wheels turning? After reading the book, it became clear to me that it is more than a biography of Rita Colwell the scientist, science administrator, policymaker and entrepreneur. The book, written by Colwell and Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, goes well beyond complaints and stories of victimhood.

A discussion of the broader concern and vision of Margaret Walsh Rossiter in the prologue resonated with me. Rossiter didnt want to stop with bringing more women into science; she wanted to bring everyone who had been excluded back women of any stripe, African American men, Latinos, other people of colour, immigrants, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, or anyone else who doesnt fit the stereotype of the white male genius.

The book proper begins with Colwells recurring encounters with existing conventions, including the advice she received against studying science even though she had fared well in high school. I grew up in Bihar, and have met too many bright female students who simply couldnt pursue higher studies after high school due to socio-economic and cultural barriers. Science was male-dominated; my family encouraged my brothers to study engineering. And Colwells writing showed how, though the individual plots are different, the same tropes played out in the US as well.

Talented women in the US struggled to get fellowships and work opportunities despite strong academic performances. In almost all institutions of higher education, women were discriminated against, and denied their due. Ironically, anti-nepotism rules were used mostly against women.

Various feminist movements have highlighted similar cases in India. The #MeToo movement exposed among many, many issues the gender-insensitive character of practising science in India. In chapter after chapter, Colwell and McGrayne describe the stories of many women scientists who pursued science despite similar odds. Some were recognised for their contributions in their lifetime, others were only after they had died, and even others not at all.

Colwell studied bacteriology and genetics at Purdue University, Indiana, where she also battled against the deeply entrenched discriminatory practices. Together with my own experiences, I sense that discrimination in science is universal.

To avoid competing with established scholars in the field of marine bacteria, Colwell chose to work on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a species thats usually found in water and the soil, and is known for its resistance to antibiotics.

When she presented her work at a workshop, Roger Stanier, a prominent scientist in that field, criticised and ridiculed her. Colwell recalled: I was not his student, not part of his laboratory, and I was intruding on his bacterium, about which he was clearly an expert. Would he have treated a male student the same way? Probably not. More likely, he would have been constructive in his criticism and actually helpful.

Colwell was offended. More significantly, she anticipated that Staniers continued criticism and ridicule could mothball her career, so she set about choosing a different bacterium to study eventually picking Vibrios.

The part of the natural universe that we are yet to explore with the scientific method is vast. But what we do study in this vastness is determined not only by curiosity or other benign forces. Our choices are also shaped by social considerations. I myself was dismayed by the twisted path that led Colwell to one species of bacteria instead of another. However, she also made seminal contributions to our knowledge of Vibrios.

As she wrote, A project that started in the crucible of despair turned into one of the best decisions I ever made. Now, fifty years later, that decision has kept me active in one of the hottest fields in the life sciences: microbiomes, the study of all the genetic material in all the microorganisms in a particular environment, whether it be the human gut, food, river water, or the ocean.

Only a woman of formidable courage, conviction and intellect could have spoken these words. And thanks to her work, we now have an advance-alert system to signal potential outbreaks of cholera, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, with huge implications for public health worldwide.

Science and government

The chapter on her research work at Georgetown University drew my attention as it reminded me of conversations with senior faculty members in Indian universities and technical institutions, during my PhD, who candidly shared how gender-biases intersect with the recruitment and promotion processes. Colwell recalls how the university, which first hired her, gave her the opportunities to grow and contribute but eventually declined to make her a full professor, despite all her accolades. She subsequently moved to the University of Maryland in 1972.

Her experiences there, as well as at the US National Science Foundation, where she became its first female director in 1998, show how she exemplified a blend of problem-solver and team-player, and her optimism and tactfulness.

As a science policy scholar, Im keenly aware of how policies influence Indias national innovation system. Reading of her work at the NSF in this regard was enlightening especially for showing how a single institution backed by political will can research ecosystems that are both sustainable and agile, to nurture innovation and entrepreneurship, particularly in emerging sciences and technologies.

Remarkably, Colwell and McGrayne dont portray Colwell as a victim of gender-biased science nor as an extraordinary warrior who demolished stereotypes. Instead, her story melds seamlessly with an ethos of scientific practice that has become coincident in the 21st century with fairness and equitability: of a scientist who valued team work, encouraged others to contribute and believed in conversations and dialogues irrespective of differences in viewpoints and perspectives.

Having said that, I wish I had come across a similar text for women who are interested in social sciences, to guide them with sources of opportunities and inspire them to pursue their dreams.

As a postdoctoral scholar working on issues in gender and science, technology and innovation, I found this book rewarding, enriching and amazing. In fact, I even felt a twinge of disappointment that there wasnt a similar book (from what I know) vis--vis the social sciences a book that told the story of a woman not as someone who made it big and challenged the system but as an exemplum of the need for and importance of perseverance and struggle.

Nimita Pandey is an STI Policy Fellow at the DST Centre for Policy Research, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

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In Rita Colwell's Memoirs, a Reminder That Discrimination in Science Is Universal - The Wire Science

Joints are the bodys hardworking hinges. When healthy, they connect your bones and give you the range of motion you need to carry out daily activities. Women, though, are particularly vulnerable to joint pain, stiffness and frustration. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that by 2040, two-thirds of arthritis (joint inflammation) sufferers will be female.

Experts point to a number of explanations for the disparity between men and women in arthritis. For starters, obesity is a major risk factor for osteoarthritis, and weight gain triggered by menopause can place stress on joints. Plus, hormones make womens' ligaments more lax, so they offer less support for joints at certain points in the menstrual cycle. Some research suggests that the angle of womens hips to their knees could make women more prone to anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuriesanother factor in osteoarthritis.

Womens immune systems seem to be more robust than mens, says Iris Navarro-Millan, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine and Hospital for Special Surgery. But this disease-fighting superpower could put immune systems into overdrive, leading them to misguidedly attack joints. As a result, women are also much more likely to have autoimmune-related joint conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Fortunately, theres much you can do to keep your hinges happy. Exercise and maintaining a healthy weight are key. Regular activity keeps joints nourished and lubricated and strengthens the muscles and tendons that keep them stable and protected, says Kathy Weber, M.D. an assistant professor of sports medicine at Rush University Medical Center. And every extra 10 pounds you carry increases the load on your weight-bearing joints by 40 pounds.

In addition to straining joints, obesity can cause metabolic changes that promote pain and inflammation. But you dont need to lose a lot to make a big difference: Dropping just five to 10% of your body weight can reduce knee pain and significantly improve function. Read on for what may be causing your pain and more ways to ease it.

Over 30 conditions could be the culprit, and they fall into two categories: mechanical wear and tear injuries and inflammatory disorders. Heres more about two of the most common.

Injury, years of use, genetics or inflammation can spur the breakdown of bone-protecting cartilage. Think of it as like potholes developing in a road, says Dr. Weber. In this setting, the lining of the joint, the synovium, can become inflamed as well.

Symptoms: OA can affect numerous joints, but they may not all flare up with symptoms at the same time. Hips, knees, the spine, the base of the thumb and small hand joints tend to be common OA sites for women. Tenderness and stiffness in affected areas may develop gradually.

Diagnosis: Your doctor will conduct a physical exam and take X-rays or other images. They may order blood work to rule out other conditions.

Treatment: Because damaged cartilage does not regrow on its own, surgery may be an option, but the goal of treatment is usually to reduce pain and restore function. Dr. Weber often starts by prescribing regular exercise or referring patients for physical therapy to strengthen muscles that support joints.

A physical therapist can create an individualized exercise plan to help you feel and function better. Medications such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) can relieve symptoms too. Steroids and other substances may be injected to ease discomfort at the site of a flare. Joint replacement is usually a last resort, and more conservative measures should be tried first.

The immune system attacks the joints, eventually causing permanent damage. The joint lining becomes inflamed and produces factors that destroy the cartilage and bone, explains Ellen Gravallese, M.D., president of the American College of Rheumatology. RA can run in families, but lifestyle factors can set it in motion. In fact, if you have a genetic predisposition and you smoke, it can increase the chances of developing RA by as much as 40 times.

Symptoms: One hallmark of RA, Dr. Gravallese says, is that your joints feel stiffest first thing in the morning or after prolonged inactivity, and then after an hour of activity and movement, they generally begin to loosen and feel less painful. (In contrast, OA pain typically gets worse with strenuous activity). RA often first appears in the small joints of the hands and feet. They may be swollen, warm and red and flare up on both sides of the body at the same time. RA symptoms can also include whole-body issues like fatigue.

Diagnosis: Episodes can come and go and early symptoms can be subtle, which means RA sufferers may not know they have it for months or even years. If you experience unexplained joint issues, be proactive. The earlier the treatment, the better the outcomeask for a referral for a rheumatologist. Doctors will start with a detailed history and a physical exam. Blood work can help detect markers of inflammation and disease.

Treatment: The goal is to halt inflammation to prevent further damage to joints. One option may be biologics, a class of drugs that can help downshift the immune system. If you continue to have active disease, you can consult with your doctor to try a different strategy.

Though common, this condition is still poorly understoodits sufferers, primarily female, may be wired to be especially sensitive to their bodies pain signals. Symptoms include pain all over the body, along with muscle aches and fatigue as well as brain fog. Fortunately, this chronic condition doesnt cause lasting damage to joints.

This infection is caused by bacteria transmitted through tick bites. If left untreated, Lyme disease can cause severe joint pain and swelling, particularly in the knees and other large joints.

Signs of this autoimmune condition include joint pain and swelling, fatigue and sometimes a butterfly-shaped facial rash. Nine out of 10 sufferers are women.

Its said that when it comes to joints, motion is lotion. So what exercise is best? Anything you enjoy enough to stick with. Even running, once thought to be a fast path to developing arthritis, has gotten the ok. In fact, a recent study found that serious runners were at no greater risk for knee arthritis. Keep these tips in mind:

Warming up for a few minutes readies the joint and the muscles around it to reduce the chance of injury, says Dr. Weber. Dont just stretch in place warm up dynamically, she says. Walk for a few minutes before you pick it up to a jog. If you are just starting an exercise routine, build up slowly in intensity and duration.

Variety in activity strengthens different muscle sets and reduces your chances of an overuse injury. An ideal joint-boosting routine combines 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic exercise such as fast walking or biking with a couple of sessions of strength training such as with free weights or resistance bands. Yoga is also a great optionit increases your flexibility and gives a natural energy boost.

Proprioception is awareness of where your body is in space, which can help you prevent joint injuries. To improve your proprioception, try standing on one leg followed by the other for a minute each while you brush your teeth every day.

Long sessions hunched in front of a computer are a recipe for stiffness. Take regular breaks to keep joints lubricated. Try setting a timer on your phone as a reminder. Then, every 30 minutes, walk around (or even march in place) for a bit.

If you do develop a joint condition, theres no reason you have to cease all activity. Your doctor or physical therapist can suggest gentle exercises such as using an elliptical trainer, biking, tai chi or water aerobics.

Original post:
The Science of Joint Health - What Causes Pain and How to Ease It - GoodHousekeeping.com

For Jill M. Goldstein, PhD, sex matters.

A professor of psychiatry and medicine at Harvard Medical School, Goldstein is passionate about the need to develop initiatives focused on sex and gender differences in disorders of the heart and brain. Ask her why and she doesn't hedge.

"Every cell has a sex," she said. "Every cell in a woman's body is different from every cell in a man's body. So we want to raise the awareness that sex is an important factor in disease outcomes."

Women are twice as likely as men to present with major depressive disorder (MDD) and have twice the rate of co-occurrence of MDD and cardiovascular disease, a phenomenon associated with three to five times' greater risk for death from cardiovascular disease. Globally, approximately 2 of every 3 people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease dementia are women.

In a recent viewpoint article published in JAMA Psychiatry, Goldstein along with colleagues Ana Langer, MD, and Jill Lesser, JD describe the need for researchers and clinicians to focus on these differences, particularly with respect to the co-occurrence of MDD, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Doing so, the authors believe, could help stem the tide of what they call this "multimorbidity crisis."

For Goldstein, the quest for sex and gender equality in medicine goes back at least three decades, when she first realized that sex differences were rarely considered, either in the lab or the clinic. Since then, she has dedicated a considerable part of her career to elucidating the differences between men and women in a variety of disorders, including MDD and its comorbidity with cardiometabolic diseases, psychoses, and the risk for dementia. She has published more than 170 articles, chapters, and other original and peer-reviewed works in these areas.

Despite her efforts, substantial gaps and barriers remain, particularly with respect to these particular conditions. For example, most animal studies in neuroscience and cardiovascular disease still use an overwhelming proportion of male samples; few systematic clinical studies have examined sex differences in the brain and heart in MDD.In mixed-sex trials of cardiovascular disease, only one third of participants are women, and only 25% to 33% of such studies report outcomes by sex. Even fewer studies including those of Alzheimer's disease, which disproportionately affects women are designed on the basis of sex.

"Women have been historically neglected in terms of attention," Langer, professor of the practice of public health at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News.

Equally troubling for the authors is the fact that researchers tend to examine each of these diseases independently at a single point in time, rather than as co-occurrences throughout life. This approach, they write, prevents a complete understanding of the shared effects of psychological, biological, social, and environmental factors across organs and tissues over an individual's lifetime.

People with both depression and cardiovascular disease have a three- to fivefold increased risk of death from heart disease.... And those people are primarily women.

"People with both depression and cardiovascular disease have a three- to fivefold increased risk of death from heart disease," Goldstein explained. "And those people are primarily women."

Not everyone agrees with Goldstein, including Lise Eliot, PhD, professor and acting discipline chair of neuroscience at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago, Illinois.

"I've been very unimpressed with studies of human brain-sex differences," Eliot told Medscape Medical News, "because one can find a brain-sex difference that fits with any gender stereotype, particularly when it comes to psychiatric disorders. But these are all disorders that have gender-difference ratios. The paradox is that sex differences are relatively trivial compared to other sources of variance, like environment and genetics."

Eliot went on to explain that gender has played a far more important role in medical outcomes than has sex. "There is a lot of gender bias built into our medical system that is, I think, the basis for a lot of these health disparities," she said. "Psychiatric diagnoses are infused with the gender stereotype. And yet, the drive is to get money to study biologic differences."

Although the current state of sex-based research in co-occurring disorders of the heart and brain has a long way to go, there are signs of improvement. Goldstein herself has been integral to these changes throughout her career, though her biggest impact may have come in 2017, when she founded the Innovation Center on Sex Differences in Medicine (ICON). The center which boasts world-renowned experts from a variety of fields seeks to change the way the world understands heart-brain disorders using sex and gender lenses.

"We really want to try to change how medicine thinks," she said.

ICON's mandate recently took on new significance when the center was designated as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Specialized Center of Research Excellence on Sex Differences. The NIH grant will fund both basic science and clinical studies of the developmental origins of sex differences in depression and the dysregulation of cardiac function efforts, Goldstein hopes, that will ultimately open the door to the development of sex-dependent therapeutic strategies

"We have a number of projects that we're working on," Goldstein said. "For example, we're developing a clinical risk tool to help predict men and women in early mid-life who might be at risk for Alzheimer's disease later on. But the key is, we're developing it in a sex-dependent way."

Her coauthors are equally involved in similar undertakings. Langer currently serves as the director of the Women and Health Initiative at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. In that role, she heads an organization that seeks female-driven solutions to women's healthcare needs around the globe. She also serves as the director of global policies and programs for ICON.

"We look at the effect of policies and programs on the health of women and try to come up with ways to identify modifying factors that would allow us to improve the health of women through the life course," Langer explained.

Lesser, on the other hand, is the president of WomenAgainstAlzheimer's, a group that seeks to find, fund, and implement a cure for Alzheimer's disease with respect to the way the disease affects women.

There are other signs of progress as well. In 1993, the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act was enacted. Part of that legislation mandates that women and minorities who had been largely overlooked to that point need to be included in sufficient numbers in clinical research to receive NIH funding. The policy was amended to its current form in 2017.

Important advances have also been made in cardiovascular medicine, with women's cardiac health centers becoming more commonplace across the country. For Goldstein, these changes were an important first step in addressing the health differences between women and men. "Heart disease is the number one killer of women in the US," she explained. "Nevertheless, women were getting into treatment later because their symptoms were not the same as the typical male symptoms. And they were dying as a result."

Multidisciplinary efforts for enhancing knowledge around sex differences will require cooperation between academics, industry, advocacy, and policy. Pharmaceutical companies, in particular, can play a big role in this revolution, the authors stress.

"The way it stands, pharmaceutical companies do not incorporate sex into the design of their studies," Goldstein said. "They may do a post hoc analysis to separate their data by sex, but that's not the same as testing a sex effect.

"Nevertheless, I believe there are many molecules sitting in companies' libraries that actually may be more effective in one sex than the other but were thought to be ineffective because the original studies were not designed by sex to test such differences," she added.

Despite the complexity of revamping the way an entire industry delivers its products and services, Goldstein and her colleagues believe the field of psychiatry is positioned to play an important role in the change, particularly with respect to the multimorbidity of MDD, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's disease. Of these disorders, MDD is often the first to emerge.

"It's very important to understand the shared early origins of these three diseases so we can target them and try to prevent them down the road," Goldstein said. "For example, if we know that sex differences in depression emerge just after puberty and we also know that these differences will place a person at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease later in life, why are we not targeting them earlier?"

The same holds true for Alzheimer's disease. "If we know that hypertension and depression are major independent risk factors for Alzheimer's disease, why are we not targeting them as soon as possible?" she added.

Richard S. Isaacson, MD, director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, agrees that this kind of precision medicine is desperately needed when it comes to preventing Alzheimer's disease. "I think we've made tremendous progress in our understanding of how cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease are in some ways inextricably linked," he said. "And I think physicians really have to understand the two are intertwined quite a bit.

"Nevertheless, we have to realize that people may look similar on the outside, but there's a lot of biologic and genetic differences on the inside," he continued. "Precision health is the future of medicine, and that's absolutely the case for Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease prevention."

Isaacson explained that this understanding has helped shape the way he approaches patients. "In the Alzheimer's Prevention Clinic, I feel like I'm one third neurologist, one third preventive cardiologist, and one third primary care doctor," he said. "And I really believe that, because our panels for Alzheimer's prevention are the same ones that are used by my cardiologist colleagues."

Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, agrees, yet he recognizes that one specialty cannot tackle the issue of multimorbidity alone. The movement needs financial partners, as well as a pipeline of trained professionals from a variety of fields who prioritize these issues throughout their careers.

Research will also be key, he says, from basic science to translational studies. "Then we need to see if we can actually leverage basic biology and clinical research to develop therapies that account for sex differences," he said. "That's a vitally important area, because it hasn't really happened in any area of medicine to date."

...one silver lining of the COVID-19 outbreak is that it seems to have increased recognition of the associations between sex, gender, and disease outcomes.

According to Smoller, one silver lining of the COVID-19 outbreak is that it seems to have increased recognition of the associations between sex, gender, and disease outcomes. Yet he feels the change may also be due to a confluence of science and culture.

"Often in medicine there's a convergence of factors that really elevate certain questions to become priorities," he explained. "One of them is advances in the science that allow them to be studied in a more fruitful way.

"At a societal level, it's always been controversial to what extent sex and gender play a role," he added. "But it's an issue that has now gathered more interest among a broader field."

"I think the devil is in the details when it comes to cardiovascular health and Alzheimer's disease coexistence," Isaacson added. "There needs to be a deeper dive and more collaborative efforts between preventive cardiologists, neurologists, psychiatrists, and endocrinologists. And we really need to work together to push the needle forward to truly have an impact."

"Things feel very different now than when I first started doing this," said Goldstein. "I think the context is different, and there's even a hunger for this from the public. I think we have a better chance of success now than ever before"

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In Disorders of the Heart and Brain, Does Sex Matter? - Medscape

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Meredith Legg Stapleton was was taking a shower one day when suddenly her left eye went dark, like a curtain falling. It was just a few months before her graduation from the University of South Carolina, Aiken, and Meredith, as a basketball star from Huntersville, North Carolina, knew that retinas could tear and thought hers might have. She was known as Mighty Warrior and Heavens Warrior, references to her athletic prowess and devout religious faith. She was on a scholarship and had the single-season record for consecutive free throws and her universitys all-time scoring record. But what happened in the shower threw her entire future into flux.

It was a point of no returnshed never regain sight in that eye. A visit to a local ophthalmologist on a Friday afternoon revealed a large tumor he suspected was ocular melanoma (OM). Meredith and her family then drove 13 hours that weekend to one of the leading OM treatment centers in the country: Wills Eye Hospital, which is part of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Oncologists confirmed the suspected diagnosis. The optimal treatment? Remove her eye.

OM is an extremely rare and aggressive form of cancer; there are only about 2,500 cases each year in the United States. Doctors call it uveal melanoma, named after the uvea, a structure of the eye that contains the iris, the ciliary body that surrounds it, and the choroid, a vascular layer between the white of the eye and the retina. Melanoma cancers can start in any of these tissues, but the most dangerous and difficult to treat are in the ciliary body and choroid because tumors can grow invisibly there for years before detection. Thats where Merediths cancer appeared. Confined to the eye, OM doesnt kill. But half the time, the cancer spreads to the liver and, once it does, 80 percent of the cases are fatal within seven years, although the mortality rates vary. Some patients only survive five to 12 months after metastases; others have survived decades.

When Meredith heard the doctors recommendation, she announced that she had no intention of following orders, insisting she wanted them to do everything to save my eye. Merediths mother, Robin Legg, says, She was a take charge personality. She even read her own chart while awaiting her eye specialist. After further tests, the oncologist recommended radiation plaque therapy, a procedure that uses rice-size radioactive seeds contained within a gold or steel bowl (called a plaque) thats surgically implanted inside the eye socket for a week to deliver targeted radiation. Meredith slept 20 hours a day and described the pain as sticking an ice pick in the eye. A month later, wearing a patch over her left eye, she graduated cum laude with the class of 2009 and continued to work, volunteer coach, and play basketball.

Meredith Legg Stapleton and her father

Courtesy Robin Legg

While she was recovering from her treatment, Meredith got an unusual message. It was from Kenan Colbert Koll, a star swimmertwo years older than Meredithwho was also from Huntersville and attended the same school, Hopewell High School. Her note said that, despite the odds, she too had OM. Kenan first noticed blurry vision in her right eye in early 2009, two years after she had graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She went to an eye doctor in Charlotte who prescribed glasses, but the problem continued. A few weeks later, she went to Duke University, where a specialist examined her and delivered the devastating news: a dangerously large OM tumor had lodged inside her eye. He offered the same recommendation for standard treatment: removing the eye. Kenan took one breath and commanded, Take it out! She had her eye removed at Duke, but, like Meredith, went to Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia for follow-up treatment once her cancer began to spread.

Meredith and Kenan became friends and collaborators, seeking new treatments and raising money for OM research. Meredith also coached Kenan on what to expect from her first appointment with Dr. Takami Sato, a medical oncologist at Wills Eye Hospital and one of the worlds top experts in OM treatment. At Wills, the doctors would give her an immunotherapy cocktail to knock back the cancer, Kenans father, Kenny Colbert, recalls, sitting in his family room near atabledominated by a wedding photo of Kenan, radiantly happy, wearing pearls and a ruched white dress. They would inject it in her femoral artery and if the tumors glowed it was working. Kenan brought her laptop into the treatment room each time intending to work, but shed just laugh and doze off, Kennysays. The next day shed get up and just go out and live her life.

Both young women did go out and live their lives.Kenan was married six months after her first eye surgery. The couple settled in Charleston and fixed up their first house while Kenan worked as an HR specialist at a flooring distributor. Meredith also married, in 2012, and even appeared on the reality TV show Say Yes to the Dress. She also appeared in Dear 16-Year-Old Me, a 2011 documentary on melanoma and the importance of early detection.

Kenan Colbert Koll with her father, Kenny.

Courtesy Sue Colbert

All the while, Meredith and Kenan also endured grim treatments and setbacks. They relied on their own little support group, continuing to swap insights about treatment and new information about the disease. Then, in late 2013, the support group grew: 19-year-old Summer Heath, another Hopewell High graduate, reached out to Meredith and Kenan through a friend on Facebook. Summer described the ordeal of blacking out from migraines in July 2013 and eventually losing sight in her right eye. A retinal specialist in Charlotte confirmed that she too had OM. When Summer and her parents consulted a local radiologist, he said he knew of two other girls from Hopewell High with the same disease. The three bonded immediately.

Well, it was weird: three girls from the same high school, and OM is an old mens disease and it doesnt happen to young girls, Summer recalls. We started talking and our families started talking andwe started to investigate.

By February 2014, Merediths cancer had spread. Thin and in pain, she nonetheless painted her nails Carolina blue with sparkles and put on a blue shawl to attend a UNCDuke basketball game with her husband and parents. Two days later she slipped into a coma. Two days after that, she died. She was 26 years old.

Kenan died four months later in May 2014just one month shy of her 29th birthday.

Summer was devastated. Its survivors guilt that I feel. My feeling was it should have been me, she says. Its been a really dark place to be, especially after Meredith and Kenan passed away. But soon, Summer recalls she found a reason to get through the guilt: two more young women in the Hopewell community who also had an OM diagnosis.

Meredith, Kenan, and Summer all lived within a few miles of each other in Huntersville, North Carolina, a suburb just north of Charlotte in Mecklenburg County; its one of the upscale communities dotting the 500 miles of shoreline surrounding Lake Norman.

Within the relatively young, prosperous population, news of Merediths and Kenans deaths spread fast in the summer of 2014. It turned out the young women werent isolated cases. By mid-2013 word was traveling on Facebook, and we started to pick up names of other young people [in our area] getting ocular melanoma, Kenny Colbert says. By August 2014, we had seven or eight names.

One of those names was Vicki Kerecman, who was diagnosed in 2011 in her early 30s. When Summer found her after both Meredith and Kenan had died, she says, Vicki was my sign not to give up, to continue the research. Then Summer found Courtney Benson, age 29, who got the same diagnosis that year. Neither of the women attended Hopewell High, but both lived within a few miles of the area.

By 2017, physicians would document a total of 18 OM cases among people who lived, worked, or spent time within a 15-mile radius of downtown Huntersville and northern Mecklenburg County. Nine of the first 12 victims identified would befemale, and sixwould be younger than 30. At least five would die from the disease. Today, depending on the vagaries of statistical reporting, patient disclosure, and spotty cancer registries, around two dozen people in the greater Mecklenburg and surrounding counties of Lake Norman in central North Carolina have been diagnosed with OM.

When Kenan was diagnosed we had never heard of ocular melanoma before, Colbert says. But then we heard about Summer Heath getting the disease, and then Courtney and Vicki. The research I pulled off the internet said the typical OM patient would be 50 years or older. It was off the charts for a female to get it. According to an oncology textbook, an excess risk of uveal melanoma has been reported in some studies in a variety of occupations such as welders, farmers, chemical workers, cooks, cleaners, and laundry workers, but there is no explanation for why. Clearly, young female athletes dont fit the demographic.

Summer Heath presented with a scholarship for Kenans Foundation by Kenny and Sue Colbert.

Courtesy Sue Colbert

Meanwhile, a similar mystery was unfolding in Auburn, Alabama, though this ocular melanoma outbreak appeared even more extensive. Juleigh Green, Ashley McCrary, Allyson Allred, and Lori Lee all attended Auburn University and three were sorority sisters in the late 1980s. Over the next 20 years, all implausibly developed OM. In 1999, when she was 27, Juleigh noticed bright flashes of light; she was diagnosed with OM in her left eye. At the time, she knew no one who had the cancer or could talk about it. Then in 2001, Allyson, then 31, also noticed bright flashes, and her doctor discovered a 10 mm OM tumor pressing on a detached retina. Both womens eyes were surgically removed. Then Ashley, whose husbands pet name for her was sweet eyes, discovered a spot on her iris in 2012. Her right eye was also taken.

Like Meredith, Kenan, and Summer, Ashley was treated at Wills Eye Hospital. When she described the crazy fact that she knew two other classmates with the exact same disease, Dr. Marlana Orloff, an ocular oncologist, was shocked. This isnt normal, Orloff told Ashley, noting that the Hopewell High School classmates had also come to Philadelphia for treatment. The fact that in two separate areas there were younger women who knew other young females with [OM] has really piqued our interest.

Summers mother, Janie Slusarick, had a similar experience when she accompanied her daughter on her first visit to Wills. When she told their doctor that three girls from the same high school had the same cancer, he froze. It was like a deer in the headlights, Slusarick recalls. The OM specialist noted that he was treating others with OM from Huntersville, along with a group of three women from Auburn, Alabama.

Dr. Miguel A. Materin, director of ophthalmic oncology and a specialist in radiation treatment of eye cancers at Duke Eye Center, also found the number and nature of cases concerning. Something is going on, but nobody knows the reasons, he says. Three girls from the same Huntersville High School? Thats not a coincidence. The same thing in Auburn, which may be even more interesting because of all these people who have some kind of relationship with the university there.

So why are all these young women contracting ocular melanoma? The question consumes victims and the OM community. Parents, desperate to discover anything in the environment that could explain what seems inexplicable, struggle to solve a medical mystery in which a tragic diagnosis is followed by questions, accusations, theories, the debunking of those theories, and, too frequently, death. Is it possible to discern a clue in the complicated mix of environmental hazards and genetics that has made these young women particularly vulnerable to disease?

OM is an illness that does not lend itself to clear causalities, like connecting cases of lung cancer to tobacco use. The rarity of the eye cancer has precluded deep studyand funding for research. Epidemiologists say its nearly impossible to nail a cancer like OM to a single risk factor. This is needle-in-the-haystack stuff: human genetics, immune systems, hormones, and environmental factors have complex interactions. One person exposed to chemical contaminants or high levels of radiation may never develop disease; others will. But that hasnt stopped efforts to try at least to narrow down areas of inquiry.

One key way to marshal support for research and treatment is to get whats known as a cancer cluster designation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC designates a cancer cluster as a greater-than-expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a period of time. With the designation, more public money and research power is made available to find out whats going on; without it, opportunities both to understand the causes and the treatments for the disease become more difficult. Nonetheless, for complex reasons that are both legal and scientific, its almost impossible to pass the threshold of an official cancer cluster designation.

The few success stories that garner public attention read like industry-busting detective stories initiated by rookies. The classic example is Erin Brockovichs now-famous 1990s investigations showing that hexavalent chromium in the town of Hinkley, California, was triggering various cancers. Her work resulted in a class action lawsuit and settlement of $333 million against Pacific Gas & Electric. Public health officials today cite other outstanding cases of cancer cluster discovery, but the singular, dramatic successes in which an investigation actually uncovers common triggers have centered almost exclusively on infectious disease outbreaks, like Legionnaires disease or the discovery of how mercury poisoning was caused by contaminated fish.

Communities across the country raise around 1,000 or more cancer cluster alarms each year, according to the CDC. For the designation of an official cluster, epidemiologists compare observed numbers of cases of specific cancers against case records of the same disease in a similar setting with a similar demographic group. At least thats the goal. But comparisons with similar groups may be over a much larger geographic area, like an entire state. The CDCs website acknowledges it is possible to create or obscure a cancer cluster by selection of a specific [geographic] area. Time comparisons may also be a crucial variable. The five ocular melanoma cases among young women with connections to Hopewell High School cropped up between 2009 through 2013, whereas North Carolina state epidemiologists compared those numbers to expected cases in the area over 20 years.

Chris Nidel, a health and chemical exposures attorney in Washington, DC, calls this practice dilution because statistical models can be used to skew results by comparing cancer or infectious disease outbreaks in a single town or zip code against countywide or several county populations over much longer periods. Diluting your population means youre unable to see change at the level youre wanting to see plainly in a town where people get sick, he says, especially because cluster isnt the answer youre looking for. The real issue is: Is there something causing disease in your community?

Then there are the challenges of investigations themselves. Many cluster investigations are launched without clear objectivesusually in response to general community distress, writes Dr. Michael Goodman, an Emory University epidemiologist, in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology. The undesirable result is that cluster investigations of cancers that appear to arise in a given geographic area or in a given community have rarely, if ever, resulted in important discoveries.

Its exceedingly difficult to get local authorities to test environmental factors, and, as a result,public health officials havent had much success in linking suspected cancer outbreaks with environmental causes. First, soil and water testing isnt required in many states, including North Carolina, unless the sites specifically require permits for pollutant discharge under state and federal law. The investigations are extraordinarily hard to do, said Catawba Riverkeeper Brandon Jones, a hydrologist. He lists a number of variables involving environmental factors as well as individual medical histories. These tests can very expensive, he noted, and you really do have to know what youre looking for.

The Clean Water Act requires the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to employ an Ambient Monitoring System whereby the state picks new sites every two years to look for water pollution, according to Jones. But there is no similar mandate for soil. Plus, there arent uniform regulations in either states or nationwide for testing for pollutants when townships build schools, neighborhoods, or commercial strips.

Making matters worse is a completely broken case tracking system. Public health officials rely on state cancer registries that are often incomplete and outdated. These registries do not track potential exposure to toxic sources, like polluted groundwater or dumping grounds for industrial waste. State cancer registries also typically use medical shorthand, documenting only the name and current address of the patient, as well as basic demographic information such as age, race, and gender. The tumor diagnosis is marked by code and staging (how far advanced the tumor is) along with initial treatment notes and where the patient lived when first diagnosed. Migration patterns of patients are almost never recorded. Registries dont include data on toxic exposure in a patients formative yearsseveral bad sunburns, say, or DDT sprays in the area. These flaws are evident with the Huntersville cases: Kenan and Meredith were counted only in a South Carolina registry, since that was where they were first diagnosed, even though they spent their high school years in Huntersville. Summer wasnt included in the North Carolina cancer registry when investigations took place in 2015 because her official data hadnt as yet caught up to registry databases.

National tracking is even worse for OM because of its comparative rarity. Other than an American Academy of Ophthalmology national registry, called the IRIS database, which records many kinds of ocular disease and their incidence rates, no national database has addressed ocular melanoma alone, although one has recently been created.

Even traditional methodology epidemiologists have relied on for their studies may be adding to the problem. In 2012, for example, MichaelGoodman, the Emory University epidemiologist, reviewed 428 cancer cluster investigations evaluating 567 suspected community outbreaks. Of those, only 72 clusters, or 13 percent, demonstrated an increased cancer incidence beyond what was expected for the community studied. Only three of the cluster investigations were actually linked, with variable degrees of certainty, to a hypothesized exposure to a specific environmental trigger, while only one investigation out of the 428 revealed a clear cause. With all this data, the limited results suggest that there may be a fundamental problem in how causality is framed, especially when it comes to identifying possible environmental triggers for health outcomes.

The challenges in cancer cluster designations have proved so daunting that Goodman and Judy S. LaKind, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Maryland Medical School, assembled a workshop to review past cases and offer new approaches. In a 2014 report, the researchers cited statistical problems such as small sample sizes, uncertain definitions of cluster boundaries and populations, and a failure to record the in-and-out migration from a suspicious area by patients. Too many cluster studies, they found, also use imprecise descriptions of both disease states and potential environmental factors. For example, public health officials might use the term brain cancer to describe a specific diagnosis such as glioblastoma. The term ground water contamination might be reported instead of the specific levels of trichloroethylene, chloroform, or dioxins. Some suspected clusters are just too small to calculate, with exposures to toxins by the community poorly defined or undefined. Then theres the pace of the disease, known as latency. Cancers develop over a long period of timeoften a decade or moremaking associations with suspected toxins much more difficult to prove.

Because of the way North Carolina public health officials counted victims in their studies, the Huntersville cases didnt reach an official cluster incidence level, according to a 2015 state public health report. The families were left grieving and infuriated. Emotions ran even higher when an official cancer cluster was determined in Mooresville, just a few miles north of Huntersville on Lake Norman, when thyroid tumors appeared in as many as 260 local victims, most of them young women and teens as young as 13.The aggregate burden of investigating both outbreaks has produced community anger and cries for help from state legislators. To many residents, Lake Norman has become a cancer alley with too many industrial contaminants and too few public health resources to investigate and find answers.

The numbers just dont make sense, says Rob Kidwell, the father of a school-aged daughter in Huntersville. These are rare cancers that shouldnt be popping up and no one seems concerned.

Kenan Colbert Koll

Courtesy Sue Colbert

Meredith Legg Stapleton

Courtesy Robin Legg

When I meet with Kenan Colbert Kolls parents, Sue and Kenny Colbert, at their Georgian-style retreat tucked away in a verdant Huntersville neighborhood, were joined by Scot and Janie Slusarick and their daughter, SummerHeath. Its June 2018, and Summer, 24 years old and teaching second grade, is about to celebrate five years of surviving OM. Summer has a blog, Cupcake v Cancer, where she shares what has been happening to her. Entries about her care, like one from last yearI think the treatment is working though. The tumors on my head have been shrinking. That is an amazing reassuring sign that we are headed in the right direction!!are mixed with photographs of friendsand trips to Disney World. When Summer speaks, she expresses both sadness and a fierce will to live.

By that June, Summer had already made 23 trips to Philadelphia for plaque therapy, biopsies, painful injections, and lasers to destroy her tumor. Months of radiation were followed by a laser to kill any cells left, then a series of injections to stop macular swelling, followed again by laser treatment in 2016 to halt hemorrhaging in her eye, which had lost all vision. Our casesMerediths, Kenans, and mineare so similar, theres a bond there, she says. Its been hard on her family; her medical insurance had paid only a fraction of her bills. But it helped when her friends gave her hotel points so she and her family could stay in Philadelphia as an outpatient for the first 10-day course of treatment.

The Colberts and Slusaricks listen as she speaks before describing their arduous four-year journey of false hopes and dead ends as they tried to get local and state officials to take environmental testing seriously. In 2014, Scot Slusarick thought that one obviouscommon denominator was location: Three of the girls with OM attended Hopewell High and two young women in their 30s lived within a mile nearby. He lobbied public health and school officials for a physical sampling of the Hopewell High water, soil, radiation sources, and air, but officials declined his requests.

At the same time, Kenny Colbert was prodding the Mecklenburg County Health Department to initiate a cancer cluster study. In March 2014, just months before Kenan died, Colbert connected with the county health director, Dr. Marcus Plescia, who phoned OM victims, families, and school officials, asking questions about potential toxic exposures and lifestyles, like work as lifeguards, sunburns, a history of smoking, or use of artificial tanning beds. Nothing suspicious was found, according to the county health department office.

While the county inquiry stalled, Colbert enlisted Huntersville Township Commissioner Danny Phillips and former Commissioner Rob Kidwell, as well as his wifein his search for answers. The Kidwells, like Slusarick, pressed hard for physical tests of the air, water, building materials, and soil at Hopewell High. They also tried to survey the townships nearby to establish baseline pollution data, but there was no consensus on how to proceed, Kidwell recalls. The state said it was a county issue; the county said it was a state issue, and nothing got done,Colbert says. Eventually state epidemiologists told Colbert that five cases in your area over the last 20 years was normal. We have five people within a one-mile area right now, he countered, referencing Meredith and Kenan, who had already died, plus Summer, Vicki, and Courtney. The state said, We dont know about these five people. Theres no central registry.

But Colbert worked to bring attention to the cause in other ways. He called local TV reporter Jim Bradley, who started looking at whether state and county health officials acknowledged a potential problem. His first report aired in November 2014, and soon other Lake Norman community members claimed an OM diagnosis. Word started traveling and soon we had about 25 names within six to seven miles, Colbert reports. Following that publicity, in late September 2015, the Colberts, Slusaricks, and other members of the Huntersville community participated in a Lookin for a Cure 5K walk/run to benefit Dr. Takami Sato, director of the uveal melanoma treatment program at Wills Eye Hospital. Dr. Sato showed up at the Huntersville run, along with his son and Dr. Marlana Orloff, who had treated both the Huntersville and Auburn women. About 1,000 people participated in the event, which raised more than $55,000.

Beyond fundraising, the run proved crucial for another reason: Dr. Randall W. Williams, the deputy secretary of health services at North Carolinas Health and Human Services, was there. Williams had spoken with Colbert and decided he needed a clinical liaison to speak to OM parents in Lake Norman. The plan was to organize a consortium of Duke, Thomas Jefferson, and UNC, Chapel Hill, experts to figure out next steps for an exploratory study.

Williams selected Dr. Mike Brennan, a retired eye surgeon and colleague of his whod done overseas medical work in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. Randall called me about OM in Huntersville, says Brennan, who is also the former president of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and he said, You know how to do ocular politics, can you help me? At the time, Brennan admitted he didnt know much about the Huntersville cases, but he agreed to sign on and organize a local registry of the Lake Norman OM patients. He told Williams the consortium should coordinate genetic testing of victims and, possibly, an environmental study of Huntersville.

As Brennan started contacting patients in late 2015, he found that patients were scattered in and around the counties surrounding Lake Norman. He almost immediately found at least three more young people in Huntersville and nearby Concord and Lincolnton, all near Lake Norman, who had reported the disease in the same timeframe, along with two older patients. But the process hit some snags: Some patients had privacy concerns and didnt want to be included in the registry. Counting cases was also difficult because there were people who were diagnosed before 2000, or their geography was wrong, or they were transients, Brennan says. But, he adds, the [patient] population grew as social media and the press publicized this. In the end, Brennan documented at least two dozen OM patients for his Lake Norman registry, although a few were excluded because their time and place of diagnosis didnt fit standard epidemiological requirements. UNC, Chapel Hill, found two more patients, one from Huntersville and another from Rock Hill, South Carolina, who had worked in Huntersville for five years. One of the last patients to be registered was Jessica Boesmiller, a mother in her late 30s whose OM was detected in late 2017, just weeks before delivering twins.

Meanwhile, officials at the North Carolina Department of Public Healths Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB) published a report in June 2015 on the OM cases. It concluded that other Lake Norman cases were random, albeit tragic, events. According to Kelly Haight Connor, a spokesperson for the state health department, An analysis of NC Central Cancer Registry (CCR) data in 2015 did not find a higher-than-expected number of ocular melanoma cases in Mecklenburg County, Huntersville or Huntersville/Cornelius from 20002013. (Physicians and epidemiologists from the state health department declined to be interviewed.) When the findings began to circulate, Huntersville parents were outraged.

Janie Slusarick called the OEEB report naive and embarrassing. There are two to three times the numbers of people affected here and the state report doesnt count them, she says. From my perspective, Brennan adds, I could tell that for good reasons, the community and parents had reason to expect more to be done.

The Slusaricks continued to press for environmental testing of the school. In 2016, facing pressure from the Huntersville community, the school system finally agreed to a first investigation of construction records and a visual inspection of Hopewell High School grounds by Hart & Hickman, a Charlotte-based environmental consulting firm. Nothing unusual was detected, and did H&H didnt recommend any soil or water tests for contamination, arguing its own chemical records search showed no single link to OM.

Scot Slusarick then pressed Charlotte-Mecklenburg facilities management to evaluate Hopewell Highs tons of imported fill dirt and building materials, but the department claimed that supervisors had already reviewed construction records when the high school was built in 2001. What about the paint? The ceilings? The lighting? he asked. Their entire investigation was a phone call. Janie pointed out that the area historically had copper mines and water tributaries running from them. She also noted that a mile and a half from school was a Piedmont liquefied natural gas storage facility, which could possibly be emitting harmful electrical pollutionsometimes known as dirty electricity. That too should have been evaluated, she says.

While environmental testing was stalled, Brennan believed that genetic testing might yield important clues. He coordinated a test of local victims to determine if anyone had the BAP1 gene mutation, a protein abnormality frequently associated with eye, skin, and kidney cancers. But all tests were negative. Even after experts from Columbia University, the New York Genome Center, and the University of Miamis Bascom Palmer Eye Institute participated in tumor tissue testing of six North Carolina patients, there was no smoking gun.

Another option was geospatial testing, which links patient activity and remembered traffic patterns with repeated exposure to toxic environmental sources such as radiation or air and water pollution. In 2017, Huntersville Township funded a study by an environmental consulting firm,Geodesy Inc., which specializes in geospatial testing. The remembered whereabouts and daily traffic patterns from 2000 to 2017 of 11 female and four male OM patients living within the Huntersville ZIP code was mapped and then correlated with township records that revealed various hot spots in Northern Mecklenburg County: an asbestos dumping site at Davidson Depot; a dry cleaning solvent clean-up site in Huntersville; several active hazardous waste storage facilities in the north; contaminated industrial sites in both Cornelius and Huntersville. It also showed the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls in Lake Norman, which provides public drinking water to Huntersville, and a concentration of high-tension power lines, cell towers, and power-generating stations in the vicinity.

The report stated, Without important clues, additional measures of air, soil, or water is not warranted. Still, Geodesy report director John Cassels called for further analysis of multiple sources, including Lake Norman public water. Both coal ash and nuclear radioactivity are common sources of pollution across all modern towns in the US, and coal ash often appears in water suppliesincluding Lake Norman. Avner Vengosh, a professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke Universitys Nicholas School of the Environment, has in fact documented coal-ash effluent in all the major lakes and streams connected to coal-fired power plants throughout North Carolina, including Lake Norman. But he notes that because of the lakes gargantuan size, dilution is large and the impact is small. Municipal water quality tests of the lake have not shown hazardous levels of any coal-ash chemicals or radioactivity.

Despite missing a clear culprit, Geodesy Incs director, John Cassells, admitshe was a little bit alarmed at some of the things their investigation found. Duke Energy, for example, had an unplanned release in 2008 of the hydrogen isotope tritium from its McGuire Nuclear Station near Huntersville,which amountedto 140,000 gallons of tritium-tainted waterflowing into Lake Norman.

While tritium is a radioactive compound found in nuclear reactors, Duke has regulatory permission to release tritium and other effluents into the Catawba River, which flows into Lake Norman. The unplanned leak, a Duke spokesperson wrote in an email, did not impact public or employee health and safety. Duke Energys director of government affairs, energy and the environment, Mark McIntire, says that tritium isnt dangerous in low doses and that Duke strictly follows toxicity-based standards for water quality established by EPA and North Carolinas Department of Environmental Quality. Bill Norton, a spokesperson from Duke Energy tells me, We have environmental discharge limits and have to report all that data to the nuclear regulatory commissionsThe Lake Norman water quality remains very good. In a later conversation he adds, Decades of environmental data at drinking water intakes show no impacts from our operations.

Tritium concentrations in Lake Norman remain below federal limits. Duke notes the calculated radiological impact of that leak on an individual was equivalent to .00005 milliremor just 1/10,000th of a dental X-ray. But Cassels is still concerned. There are several drinking water intakes downstream [from the McGuire Station] and no way to clear these compounds, he says. Even low concentrations of tritium may be more important in cancer than we originally thought.

There are some reasons for hope: The efforts to achieve a national and international registry of OM cases are rapidly coming to fruition. The Melanoma Research Foundation has created a new kind of patient-centric registry that will help disease detectives track the natural history of eye melanomas, including environmental risk patterns, treatments, and recovery. Dr. Sara Selig, a physician who directs Cure OM, the Melanoma Research Foundation initiative, explains, Whats hindered the research into some of these unique populations in the past is that you know someone who may have lived in one area and been diagnosed somewhere else, and theres not a single repository catching this information. Whats the unique factor? The person. She says that instead of the standard clinical data provided by physicians, a new repository will allow patients to enter remembered environmental exposure data, migration patterns, family histories, and responses to treatment across the lifecycle of the disease.

Academic researchers hope to find clues to OM causes in these records and in victims genomes. At Columbia Universitys Irving Medical Center, Dr. Richard Carvajal, a director of experimental therapeutics, is conducting a whole genome sequencing study of both the North Carolina and Alabama OM patients, examining tumor tissue for patterns of genetic damage. There are about 30 DNA damage signatures that have been characterized, and are pretty well accepted, says Dr. William Harbour, a consultant on the project and a genetics researcher at University of Miamis Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. Harbour is optimistic; a genetic pattern may narrow down environmental causes and point to one or more smoking guns. Theres a lot of reasons to think this eye cancer isnt coincidental, he says. Some people are concerned with legal implications, and maybe they dont want to find [the answers]. But from a government standpoint, your best bet is to show youve made every reasonable effort to find the cause.

Even though the Huntersville community search for an OM cause seemed inconclusive, there is movement on attempts to get to the bottom of the Alabama cases. In August 2018, Auburn University also engaged Geodesy Inc. for a geospatial investigation. According to Cassels, the work has been delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, but it could still turn up some promising data. The geospatial analysis will dig into genetic, lifestyle, or environmental causes of the disease in the Auburn community. It will focus on the 25 surviving patients out of the 31 who were confirmed to have the disease and affiliated with the school from 1980 to 2019.

Ashley McCrary, the Auburn grad who was diagnosed with OM in 2012, says, The geospatial engineer is going to come in and ask a thousand questions to everybody [regarding remembered whereabouts, exposures, and life style habits] and pray that people will send the information back. Dr. John Mason, a retinal specialist based in Birmingham who treats many of the Auburn patients, is optimistic that this study, which includes more patients and looks at a longer time frame than past research, will also yield important clues.

Still, the Colberts and Slusaricks remain haunted by the painful question: How can public health officials be fully aware of these cancer outbreaks andnot know what to do? Back when Kenan was still alive, Kenny Colbert wanted to get the community riled up, to change the attitude of public health officials who seemed not to want to look more carefully at a problem that could make other young people sick. We needed to get people mad and scared about this, he says. We decided we should get some people embarrassed about this, about doing nothing or passing the buck.

The battle also continues forpatients like Summer Heath and Jessica Boesmiller, the young woman whose cancer was discovered just before she delivered twins.Summer shuttles back and forth to Wills Eye, as well as to Duke, for treatments, now for brain and spinal tumors. But she still keeps her blog. She still teaches second grade at Langtree Charter Academy Elementary School. And she recently celebrated seven years of survival since her diagnosis, as well as her 26th birthday.

Jessica also regularly travels to Wills, in between the demands of raising her four kids, to treat the cancer that has metastasized to her spine and liver. She reflects on her experience from two perspectives: first, as a fierce advocate for changing the usual approaches to understanding the cause of this devastating disease. Everyone investigating ocular melanoma is too worried about liability to say what the cause could be without [assembling] clear evidence, she says. But I want full disclosurefull access and open testing of the environment. If the old ways of finding out whats wrong dont work, find a new way. This cluster is just too coincidental to be a coincidence.

At the same time, Jessica has the perspective of a young woman, a daughter, a wife, and a mother whose life has been unalterably changed and defined by her battle with OM. People ask how I feel and its difficult to express sometimes. My family sees the pain and lack of energy and physical strength. They see the tiredness and nausea. They miss the old me, Jessica says, and I really do.

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One Case of a Rare Eye Cancer Was Weird. When 4 More Appeared, the Town Knew Something Wasn't Right. - Mother Jones

In the midst of a pandemic that has brought so much worry and loss, its natural to want to helpto do some small part to solve a problem, to counter pain, or to, importantly, remind others that there is beauty and wonder in the world. Scientists have long been doing just that. Many are chasing answers to the myriad challenges that people face every day, and revealing the rewards in the pursuit of knowledge itself. Its in that spirit that we present this years SN 10: Scientists to Watch.

For the sixth consecutive year, Science News is featuring 10 early- and mid-career scientists who are pushing the boundaries of scientific inquiry. Some of the researchers are asking questions with huge societal importance: How do we prevent teen suicide? What are the ingredients in wildfire smoke that are damaging to health? Is there a better way to monitor earthquakes to save lives? What about finding new ways to diagnose and treat diseases?

Others are trying to grasp how weird and wonderful the natural world isfrom exploring how many supermassive black holes are out there in space to understanding the minuscule genetic details that drive evolution. For instance, SaraH Zanders, one of this years SN10, is unveiling the drama that unfolds when life divvies up its genetic material.

A couple of the scientists on this years list have also taken steps to support people from groups that are underrepresented in the sciences. These researchers see how science benefits when people from diverse backgrounds contribute to the pursuit of answers.

Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox

All of this years honorees are age 40 and under, and all were nominated by Nobel laureates, recently elected members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences or previous SN 10 scientists. The world feels very different than it did at the start of 2020, when we first put out our call for SN 10 nominations, but the passion these scientists have for their work endures. The curiosity, creativity and drive of this crew offers hope that we can overcome some of our biggest challenges.

Though it often takes time, out of crisis comes action. Also out of crisis comes a renewed appreciation for small pleasures that give life meaning. These researchers find joy in the search for scientific answers. Heres how Zanders describes what motivates her work: Its just I like to solve puzzles. ElizabethQuill

Affiliation: Dartmouth CollegeHometown: Dhaka, BangladeshFavorite black hole: Cygnus X-1

Tonima Tasnim Ananna is bringing the heaviest black holes out of hiding. She has drawn the most complete picture yet of black holes across the universe where they are, how they grow and how they affect their environments. And she did it with the help of artificial intelligence.

As far as astronomers can tell, nearly every galaxy stows a black hole at its center, weighing millions or billions of times the mass of the sun. Though these supermassive black holes can heat surrounding material until it glows brighter than all the galaxys stars combined, the light can be concealed by gas and dust also drawn in by the black holes pull. High-energy X-rays cut through that dusty veil. So for her Ph.D., completed in 2019, Ananna gathered surveys from four X-ray telescopes, more datasets than any previous study had used. Her goal was to create a model of how black holes grow and change across cosmic history. It was supposed to be a short paper, Ananna says. But models that explained one or a few of the datasets didnt work for the full sample. It stumped us for some time.

To break the gridlock, she developed a neural network, a type of artificial intelligence, to find a description of the black hole population that explained what all the observatories saw. She just went off and taught herself machine learning, says astrophysicist Meg Urry of Yale University, Anannas Ph.D. adviser. She doesnt say, Oh, I cant do this. She just figures out a way to learn it and do it. One early result of the model suggests that there are many more active black holes out there than previously realized.

Black holes could be gobbling down gas as fast as theoretically possible.

Galaxies live and die by their black holes. When a black hole puts out energy into the galaxy, it can cause stars to form, Ananna says. Or it could blow gas away, shutting down star formation and stunting the galaxys growth (SN: 3/31/20). So understanding black holes is key to understanding how cosmic structures everything from galaxy clusters down to planets and perhaps even life came to be. Anannas model is built on data describing black holes at different cosmic distances. Because looking far in space is like looking back in time, the model shows how black holes grow and change over time. It could also help figure out how efficiently black holes eat. Early hints suggest black holes could be gobbling down gas as fast as theoretically possible, which may help explain how some got so big so fast (SN: 3/16/18).

When Ananna was a 5-year-old in Dhaka, Bangladesh, her mother told her about the Pathfinder spacecraft landing on Mars. Her mother was a homemaker, she says, but was curious about science and encouraged Anannas curiosity, too. Thats when I realized there were other worlds, she says. Thats when I wanted to study astronomy. There were not a lot of opportunities to study space in Bangladesh, so she came to the United States for undergrad, attending Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She chose an all-womens school not known for a lot of drinking to reassure her parents that she was not going abroad to party. Although Ananna intended to keep her head down and study, she was surprised by the social opportunities she found. The women at Bryn Mawr were fiercely feminist, articulate, opinionated and independent, she says. It really helped me grow a lot. Traveling for internships at NASA and CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, and a year at the University of Cambridge, boosted her confidence. (She did end up going to some parties no alcohol for me, though.)

Now, Ananna is giving back. She cofounded Wi-STEM (pronounced wisdom), a mentorship network for girls and young women who are interested in science. She and four other Bangladeshi scientists who studied in the United States mentor a group of 20 female high school and college students in Bangladesh, helping them find paths to pursue science. LisaGrossman

Affiliation: Texas Tech UniversityHometown: Rome, ItalyFavorite telescope: Very Large Array, New Mexico

On September 3, 2017, Alessandra Corsi finally saw what she had been waiting for since mid-August: a small dot in her telescope images that was the radio afterglow of a neutron star collision. That stellar clash, discovered by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory team, or LIGO, which included Corsi, was the first direct sighting of a neutron star collision (SN: 10/16/17). The event, dubbed GW170817, was also the first of any kind seen in both gravitational waves and light waves.

Telescopes around the world spotted all kinds of light from the crash site, but one particular kind, the radio waves, took their sweet time showing up. Corsi had been waiting since August17, when the gravitational waves were spotted. Longest two weeks of my life, Corsi says. The radio waves were key to understanding a superfast particle jet launched by the colliding stars.

Early on, the jet appeared to have been smothered by a plume of debris from the collision (SN: 12/20/17). But follow-up radio observations made by Corsis team and others confirmed that the jet had punched through the wreckage (SN: 2/22/19). This jet was the first of its kind to be seen from the side, allowing Corsi and colleagues to probe its structure. The jet almost certainly would have gone unnoticed if the gravitational waves hadnt clued astronomers in.

Corsi is a pioneer in the new field of multimessenger astronomy, which pairs observations of light waves with spacetime ripples, or gravitational waves. The pairing is like having eyes and ears on the cosmos, Corsi says. You cannot learn all that you could with only one of the two. In the case of GW170817, gravitational waves revealed how the neutron stars danced around each other as they spiraled toward collision, and light waves unveiled the type of material left in the aftermath (SN: 10/23/19). Using this multimessenger approach could also give astronomers a more complete picture of other cataclysms, such as smashups between neutron stars and black holes, and the explosive deaths of massive stars. Such spectacular events reveal some of the most fundamental physics in our universe, Corsi says.

If gravitational wave signals were converted into sound, they would create their own kind of music.

Most researchers specialize in either gravitational waves or light, but Corsi is very well-versed in both messengers, says Wen-fai Fong, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. That makes her extremely versatile in terms of the types of multimessenger science she can study.

Corsi has now built a computational tool to scan LIGO data for gravitational waves stirred up by whatever is left behind in a neutron star merger. The tool is based on a paper she published in 2009 years before LIGO scored its first gravitational wave detection (SN: 2/11/16). The paper describes the gravitational wave pattern that would signal the presence of one possible remnant: a rapidly spinning, elongated neutron star. Alternatively, a neutron star smashup could leave behind a black hole. Knowing which tells us a lot about how matter behaves at densities way higher than we could ever explore in a lab, Corsi says.

Corsi taught herself to play the piano in high school, and now enjoys playing both classical music and tunes from favorite childhood movies, like Beauty and the Beast. The audio frequencies of piano notes are similar to the frequencies of spacetime tremors picked up by LIGO. If gravitational wave signals were converted into sound, they would create their own kind of music. Thats the thing I like to think of when Im playing, she says. MariaTemming

Affiliation: Colorado State UniversityHometown: Richmond, R.I.Favorite outdoor activities: Cross-country skiing and gardening

Emily Fischer has always cared about air pollution. Its innate. Its a calling, she says. Exposure to air pollution raises your risk for many common ailments, such as cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes and obesity. But unlike some other risk factors for these diseases, you cant choose not to breathe, right? You have to have clean air for everyone. In her youth, she organized rallies to clean up the cigarette smokefilled air of her Rhode Island high school. That interest led Fischer to study atmospheric chemistry and motivates her current work as a self-described air pollution detective. Air pollution may conjure images of thick black plumes billowing from smokestacks, but Fischer says most air pollution is invisible and poorly understood. She combines analytical chemistry with high-flying techniques to understand where air pollution comes from and how it changes as it moves through the air.

Wildfire smoke like that filling the skies in the American West this season is a major, but still mysterious, source of air pollution. Thousands of different solids, liquids and gases swirl together to form wildfire smoke, and its chemical composition changes as it blows through the atmosphere. This dynamic mixture, which is also affected by whats burning on the ground, is tricky to measure, since each of its many components requires highly specialized equipment and expertise to assess. The equipment also has to be airborne, typically lofted into the air via planes or balloons. There has been beautiful work on wildfire smoke, Fischer says, but in most studies, we just have not had all the measurements needed to really interpret things.

You cant choose not to breathe, right? You have to have clean air for everyone.

To get a fuller view, she dreamed big: Why not try to measure everything, and measure it systematically? She pulled together a diverse team of 10 lead researchers, and scores more graduate students and postdocs, to pull off the most comprehensive analysis of wildfire smoke ever attempted, a project dubbed WE-CAN. During the summer of 2018, Fischer led over a dozen six-hour flights over the West, chasing wildfire smoke plumes and systematically measuring the air in and around smoke plumes with nearly 30 different instruments crammed into the cargo hold of a C-130 plane.

[WE-CAN] is a big collaboration, says Ronald Cohen, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Berkeley. He says success stemmed in large part from the team that came together.

Making an environment for successful collaboration is really satisfying to me, Fischer says.

While team members are still analyzing the data, the project is already revealing some of the smokes secrets. For example, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide two chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems are abundant in wildfire smoke. Recent wildfires show how important it is to understand the role of climate change in fires, Fischer says, and who is most vulnerable in our society, and how we can best prepare and protect those communities.

Fisher is also planning to adapt some of what shes learned from WE-CAN to track ammonia emissions from farms and feed lots, which are another major source of air pollution.

Fischer is deeply committed to bringing more undergraduate women, especially women of color, into the geosciences. And shes using science to figure out how. She brought a team of social scientists and geoscientists together to study how different interventions can help. She and colleagues found that for every female role model a student has, her probability of continuing on in her geosciences major roughly doubles. Having someone to look up to who looks like them is key to building a sense of belonging and identity as a scientist, Fischer says. To help build that network, Fischer started PROGRESS, a workshop and mentorship program that aims to support undergraduate women in the geosciences. Started at Colorado State University in 2014, the program has since expanded, reaching over 300 women at institutions across the United States.

For her own mentees, Fischer tries to instill a willingness to take risks and go after big, bold questions. The easy things are done, she says. Pushing forward our understanding of pressing questions means chasing research projects that might lead nowhere, she says, or might crack open a new field of research. Its OK to be wrong, and its OK to take risks. Thats what science needs right now. JonathanLambert

Affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignHometown: Mumbai, IndiaFavorite element:Gold

Prashant Jain explores how light interacts with matter such as how plants use sunlight to photosynthesize and applies that knowledge to new problems. He recently took lessons from nature to convert carbon dioxide into other useful molecules. In a paper last year in Nature Communications, Jain and Sungju Yu, also at Illinois at the time, reported using gold nanoparticles as a catalyst to drive chemical reactions between carbon dioxide and water.

When light hit the nanoparticles, it set off a series of reactions that converted carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels such as methane and propane. In essence, the process not only sucked carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas out of the air, but it also made that carbon into fuel. No wonder the oil giant Shell is funding Jains work. The whole process isnt very efficient, so Jain is working to improve how much carbon dioxide gets used and how much fuel gets produced. But along the way he hopes to learn more about how nature uses energy to make matter and to inspire his lab to create more sustainable and renewable energy technologies.

I am myself still a student.

In another example of using chemistry to push toward future technologies, Jain and colleagues shined light on gold and platinum nanoparticles and triggered reactions that liberated hydrogen from ammonia molecules. Hydrogen is important in many industries fuel cells for zero-carbon vehicles use it, for example but it can be dangerous to transport because its flammable. Jains discovery could allow workers to transport ammonia instead, which is safer, and then free the hydrogen from the ammonia once it has arrived wheres it needed. The work was reported online in July in Angewandte Chemie.

Jain has a remarkable ability and optimism to see unsuccessful laboratory experiments as successful steps toward understanding the natural world, says Karthish Manthiram, a chemical engineer at MIT. As a first-year graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, Manthiram remembers being frustrated that his experiments werent turning out as expected. But Jain, a postdoctoral fellow in the same lab, stepped in to helpand recast the problematic results. Hes always viewed what others see as failure as moments of clarity that build up to moments when things make more sense, Manthiram says. For me that was an important lesson in how to be a scientist.

Growing up in a family that worked mostly in business and finance, Jain fell in love with science as a preteen inspired in part by watching the movie Jurassic Park and its fictional depiction of what might be possible through understanding the molecular world. Soon he spotted a physics textbook for sale from a street vendor and bought it. I tried to read the book, nothing much made sense, he says. I wanted to be the one to figure out all these mysteries of nature. He chose to major in chemical engineering in college (inspired in part by a magazine published by the chemical company DuPont), and then switched to physical chemistry when he moved to the United States to get a Ph.D.

Promoted this year to full professor, Jain has never stopped pushing to acquire new knowledge; when he finished teaching this last spring semester, he enrolled in an online MIT course on quantum information science. I am myself still a student, he says. AlexandraWitze

Affiliation: Indiana UniversityHometown: Houston, TexasFavorite fieldwork: Observing rituals

Between 2000 and 2015, at a high school of about 2,000 students in the town of Poplar Grove (a pseudonym), 16 former and current students died by suicide; three other similar-aged individuals in the community, mostly at private schools, also took their own lives. A clinician who had grown up in the town reached out to Anna Mueller for help breaking the cruel cycle. Before that e-mail in fall 2013, Mueller was using big data to understand why teen and young adult suicide rates in the United States were spiking. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that suicides among 10- to 24-year-olds jumped 56 percent between 2007 and 2017.

Scholars theorized that suicidal people attracted other suicidal people. But Muellers work undercut that idea. In 2015 in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, for instance, she reported that merely having a suicidal friend did not increase a teens suicide risk. A teens risk only went up with awareness that a teenage friend had made a suicide attempt. Knowledge of the attempt matters to transformingrisk, Mueller says. She carried an understanding of that contagion effect to Poplar Grove, where she worked with sociologist Seth Abrutyn of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the half of the duo who is more focused on the theoretical.

Anna Muellers long-term goal is to create a sort of litmus test that identifies schools that could be at risk of a suicide cluster.

The team conducted 110 interviews and focus group meetings, lasting from 45 minutes to four hours, with Poplar Grove residents, plus some individuals outside the community for comparison. The teams research revealed that teens felt an intense pressure to achieve in their affluent, mostly white town, where everybody seemed to know everyone else. While teens and young adults in a first wave of suicides might have had mental health problems, peers and community members often attributed those deaths to the towns pressure cooker environment. That narrative, however incomplete, was especially strong when the youth who killed themselves were classic overachievers. Tragically, over time, that script became embedded in the local culture, making even youth who werent previously suicidal see suicide as a viable option (SN: 4/3/19), Mueller says.

Mueller and Abrutyn were among the first researchers to start chipping away at the underlying reasons for why suicide rates have been rising in high schoolers, particularly overachieving girls without obvious underlying mental health problems, says Bernice Pescosolido, a sociologist at Indiana University in Bloomington who helped bring Mueller into the schools sociology department. What Anna and Seth have really been able to show is how imitation works and what the contagion effect looks like on the ground.

Muellers long-term goal is to create a sort of litmus test that identifies schools that could be at risk of a suicide cluster. That way, school and community leaders can intervene before the first suicide and its resulting firestorm. Since fall 2018, she has been researching suicide trends in school districts in Colorado that are more diverse than Poplar Grove. When it comes to school culture, her early work shows, theres often a trade-off between academic or athletic excellence and a supportive environment.

In anticipation of her work in Poplar Grove, Mueller knew she needed a more boots-on-the-ground approach than her big data training allowed. So she trained in qualitative methods, including how to design a study; interview techniques, such as how to write questions to elicit desired conversations; and the detailed data analysis required for this research tactic.

Mueller also sees the value in observing interactions, a common sociological approach. This spring, with the pandemic in full swing, she spent a lot of time on her home computer watching socially distant graduation ceremonies in her Colorado schools. She found that a schools culture showed in the details, such as whether valedictorians addressed hot-button issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, in their speeches. Of all of my moments in the field, rituals are the ones that tug at my own heartstrings because Im watching kids graduate and thats just inherently beautiful, but it also is a very powerful data moment, she says. SujataGupta

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Affiliation: MITHometown: Adelaide, AustraliaFavorite subatomic particle: The gluon

When Phiala Shanahan was a graduate student, she was shocked to learn that experiments disagreed on the size of the proton (SN: 9/10/19). Protons and neutrons are the key building blocks of 99 percent of the visible matter in the universe, she says. And we know, in some sense, surprisingly little about their internal structure.

If theres something I dont understand, Im extremely stubborn when it comes to figuring out the answer.

That ignorance inspires her studies. She aims to calculate the characteristics of protons and neutrons based on fundamental physics. That includes not just their size, but also their mass and the nature of their components how, for example, the quarks and gluons that make them up are sprinkled around inside. Such calculations can help scientists put the standard model, the theory that governs elementary particles and their interactions, to the test.

Shanahan is known for her prowess calculating the influence of gluons, particles that carry the strong force, which binds the proton together. For example, when gluons contributions are included, the proton is squeezed to a pressure greater than estimated to exist within incredibly dense neutron stars, she and a coauthor reported in Physical Review Letters in 2019. Its a very remarkable calculation, says physicist Volker Burkert of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va. Thats very fundamental, and its the first time it has been done. Because they have no electric charge, gluons tend to elude experimental measurements, and that has left the particles neglected in theoretical calculations as well. Shanahans gluon results should be testable at a new particle collider, the Electron-Ion Collider, planned to be built at Brookhaven National Lab in Upton, N.Y. (SN: 4/18/17).

Persistence. I hate not knowing something, she says. So if theres something I dont understand, Im extremely stubborn when it comes to figuring out the answer.

A technique called lattice QCD is the foundation for Shanahans work. Its named for quantum chromodynamics, the piece of the standard model that describes the behavior of quarks and gluons. QCD should allow scientists to predict the properties of protons and neutrons from the bottom up, but the theory is incredibly complex, making full calculations impossible to perform even on the best available supercomputers. Lattice QCD is a shortcut. It breaks up space and time into a grid on which particles reside, simplifying calculations. Shanahan is leading efforts to use machine learning to rev up lattice QCD calculations putting her persistence to good use. We dont have to rely on computers getting better. We can have smarter algorithms for exploiting those computers, she says. She hopes to speed up calculations enough that she can go beyond protons and neutrons, working her way up to the properties of atomic nuclei. EmilyConover

Affiliation: CaltechHometown: Kolomna, RussiaFavorite protein: He cant pick just one

Mikhail Shapiro believes that in the future, were going to have smart biological devices that are roaming our bodies, diagnosing and treating disease something akin to the submarine in the 1966 classic sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage. As the shrunken sub entered and repaired the body of a sick scientist, commanders on the outside helped control it. Similarly, were going to want to talk to the cells that we are going to send into the body to treat cancer, or inflammation, or neurological diseases, Shapiro says.

Shapiro and his colleagues are working on building, watching and controlling such cellular submarines in the real world. Such a deep view inside the body might offer clues to basic science questions, such as how communities of gut bacteria grow, how immune cells migrate through the body or how brains are built cell by cell.

Despite his futuristic visions, Shapiro is often drawn to the past. I like science history a lot, he says. Right now, hes in the middle of rereading the Pulitzer Prizewinning The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Just before that, he read a biography of Marie Curie.

There is not a protein that I learn about that I dont think about ways to misuse it, Shapiro says. But hes especially fond of the proteins that build the outer shell of gas vesicles in certain kinds of bacteria. These microscopic air bags have so many uses that were totally unanticipated, Shapiro says.

In addition to letting bacteria sink or float, these bubbles provide a communication system, Shapiro and colleagues have found. Over the last several years, they have coaxed both bacterial cells and human cells to make gas vesicles and have placed such cells within mice. Because the air-filled pockets reflect sound, the engineered cells can be tracked from outside a mouses body. Using patterns of sound waves, the researchers can also drive bacterial cells around in lab dishes.

There is not a protein that I learn about that I dont think about ways to misuse it.

In another nod to Fantastic Voyage, scientists can weaponize these cellular submarines. Weve essentially turned cells into suicide agents triggered by ultrasound, Shapiro says. This explosion could release chemicals into the surroundings and destroy nearby cells. This sort of targeted detonation could be damaging to tumors, for instance. Complete warfare is possible, he says.

By seeing the potential in these esoteric gas vesicles, Shapiro was ahead of his time and hugely innovative, says Jason Lewis, a molecular imaging scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. I think weve only scratched the surface of what his work will do in terms of a greater impact.

Frustration, Shapiro says, is what made him switch to engineering after studying neuroscience as an undergraduate at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He realized that existing tools for studying processes inside the brain fell short. And I didnt see enough people making better tools.

But he didnt stop at developing new neuroscience technologies. Oddly enough, once I got into the engineering part of things, I got so fascinated with weird proteins, and magnetic fields, and sound waves, and all the more physics-y side of things. Thats become as much, if not more, of my passion as the original neuroscience. In his Twitter bio, Shapiro describes his expertise as succinctly as possible: Bio-Acousto-Magneto-Neuro-Chemical Engineer at Caltech. LauraSanders

Affiliation: Stanford UniversityHometown: Nanjing, ChinaFavorite organism: Planarian

Planarians are the most charismatic of all flatworms, Bo Wang says. They have this childish cuteness that people just love. But the adorable facade isnt what drew Wang to study the deceptively simple worms, which resemble little arrows with eyes. It was planarians superpower: regeneration. Slice a planarian into pieces and, within a week or two, each chunk will grow into a new flatworm head and all. Studying the cells that drive this process could offer lessons for turning on regeneration in human tissues, to treat various diseases, regrow limbs and grow organs for next-generation transplants.

Wang uses statistical physics to figure out how planarians regenerate entire organs cell by cell. Newly formed brain cells, for instance, must physically position themselves to avoid turning into amorphous aggregates, Wang says. His interest in how things fit together began in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There, Wang trained as a physicist and worked on self-assembling materials. Wang now works to uncover the physical rules that living cells follow. Im fascinated by how molecules arrange themselves seemingly randomly, but there are still statistical rules that those molecules will follow, he says.

Bo Wang works to uncover the physical rules that living cells follow.

His physics-based approach is raising new questions and unveiling biological processes that would be hard for biologists to come by using traditional methods alone, says regeneration biologist Alejandro Snchez Alvarado of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo. Wang is a new breed of flatworm biologist, Snchez Alvarado says. He is occupying a very unique niche in the community of developmental biology.

Wang and colleagues recently found that nerve cells, or neurons, in regenerating planarian brains form a predictable pattern dictated by the types of cells in their midst. Planarians brains are akin to cities made up of neighborhoods of neurons. Within each neighborhood, no two neurons that do the same job will live next to each other; those cells repulse each other but stay close enough to communicate, the researchers reported in the May Nature Physics. Because of this behavior, increasing the types of neurons in a neighborhood limits the ways cells can pack together. The team dubbed this packing process chromatic jamming, after a famous mathematical puzzle called the four-color problem (SN: 3/6/09).

The finding is surprising and challenges what we think we understand about organogenesis and about organization of cells within an organ, says Snchez Alvarado. Chromatic jamming appears to be key to how the planarian brain comes together, guiding single cells into neighborhoods that are a driving force in organ development, he says. If similar physical rules apply to human cells, that could help scientists sketch blueprints for engineering and growing artificial organs. CassieMartin

Affiliation: Stowers Institute for Medical ResearchHometown: Glenwood, IowaFavorite organism: Fission yeast

An invitation to work in the lab of her genetics professor Robert Malone at the University of Iowa in Iowa City set SaraH Zanders on the path to becoming a scientist. It was a turning point in my life, Zanders says. Before that, she didnt really know how she would put her biology degree to use, or what it meant to be a scientist. In Malones lab, she fell in love with meiosis, the process by which organisms divvy up genetic information to pass on to future generations. The first step is julienning the genome and swapping pieces of chromosomes. That just seems like such a bad idea to basically shred your [DNA] in the process of getting it from one generation to the next, she says. She started studying the proteins involved in making the cuts. It was like I was born to do that. I never would have known without that push.

A different kind of push led Zanders to spell her first name with a capital H: An elementary school teacher kept leaving the letter off. Zanders has capitalized it for emphasis ever since. If I write it without the big H, it doesnt look like my name anymore, she says. It feels like somebody else.

Meiosis is full of conflict. For her postdoctoral work, Zanders focused on a particular type of dustup caused by some selfish genesgenes that propagate themselves even if it hurts the host. As the monk Gregor Mendel laid out in his study of pea plants, a particular version of a gene typically has a 50-50 chance of being passed on to the next generation. But the selfish genes Zanders was studying, a type called meiotic drivers because they propel themselves during meiosis, manage to get themselves inherited far more often. These kinds of systems do a complete end run around Mendels laws, says Daniel Barbash, an evolutionary geneticist at Cornell University.

In Schizosaccharomyces pombe, also called fission yeast, Zanders discovered, a family of selfish genes makes moves that would be right at home in a Game of Thrones story line. Zanders and colleagues were the first to work out the molecular tricks that thesegenes use to skirt Mendels laws, reporting the findings in eLife in 2017. The genes, known as wtf genes, produce both a poison and an antidote. All of the spores the yeasts gametes get the poison, but only those that inherit certain gene versions also get an antidote. Spores that dont get the antidote die, ensuring that only offspring with specific wtf gene versions survive to pass their genes on to the next generation. For the fission yeast, such predatory tactics can have big consequences, even driving two nearly identical strains toward becoming different species. Some selfish genes have made themselves essential for proper development (SN: 7/3/18). In humans and other animals, genetic conflicts may lead to infertility.

For the fission yeast, such predatory tactics can have big consequences, even driving two nearly identical strains toward becoming different species.

This extremely important family of meiotic cheaters has been just sitting in plain sight waiting for somebody who had the right kind of lens and the care to discover them, says Harmit Malik, an evolutionary geneticist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Zanders postdoctoral mentor. Zanders helped build a case that the skewed inheritance in these yeast was a real effect, not just fluctuations in the data. Before she began her work, virtually nothing was known about meiotic drivers in yeast. Now the wtf genes are among the best known meiotic drivers studied in any lab organism. Some selfish genes in worms also use the poison-antidote trick to beat the competition (SN: 5/11/17). Meiotic drivers in fruit flies, mice and maybe humans win genetic conflicts by other means (SN: 10/31/17; SN: 2/24/16).

Zanders is now on the lookout for other genetic fights in yeast. Understanding such conflicts more generally may help answer big questions in evolution, as well as shedding light on human infertility. As for what motivates her, Its just I like to solve puzzles, Zanders laughs. I wish it was a deep desire to help people, but its definitely not that. TinaHesmanSaey

Affiliation: CaltechHometown: Jinzhai County, ChinaFavorite hobby: Carpentry

As the Rose Parade wound through Pasadena, Calif., on January 1, 2020, Zhongwen Zhan listened to the underground echoes of the marching bands and dancers. With a sensitive technology known as distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS, Zhan tracked the parades progress. He even identified the most ground-shaking band. (It was the Southern University and A&M Colleges Human Jukebox.)

The study was a small but elegant proof of concept, revealing how DAS is capable of mapping out and distinguishing among small seismic sources that span just a few meters: zigzagging motorcycles, the heavy press of floats on the road, the steady pace of a marching band. But Zhan seeks to use the technology for bigger-picture scientific questions, including developing early warning systems for earthquakes, studying the forces that control the slow slide of glaciers and exploring seismic signals on other worlds.

Zhan has a crystal-clear vision of DAS scientific possibilities, says Nate Lindsey, a geophysicist at Stanford University who is also part of the small community of researchers exploring the uses of DAS. When you get such a cool new tool, you like to just apply it to everything, he adds. But Zhans expertise is very deep, and it goes into many different areas. He knows whats important.

So far, Zhan and other researchers have used the technology to study aftershocks following the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes in Southern California (SN: 7/12/19), to demonstrate that interactions between ocean waves produce tiny quakes beneath the North Sea, and to examine the structure of glaciers.

DAS piggybacks off the millions of fiber-optic cables that run beneath the ground, ferrying data for internet service, phones and televisions (SN: 6/14/18). Not all of the glass cables are in use all of the time, and these strands of dark fiber can be temporarily repurposed as seismic sensors. When pulses of light are fired into the fibers ends, defects in the glass reflect the light back to its source. As vibrations within the Earth shift and stretch the fibers, a pulses travel time also shifts.

Whole networks of seismic sensors could be deployed in places currently difficult or impossible to monitorat the ocean bottom, atop Antarctic glaciers, on other planets.

Over the last few years, scientists have begun testing the effectiveness of these dark fibers as inexpensive, dense seismic arrays which researchers call DAS to help monitor earthquakes and create fine-scale images of the subsurface. In these settings, Zhan notes, DAS is proving to be a very useful supplement to existing seismograph networks. But the potential is far greater. Whole networks of sensors could be deployed in places currently difficult or impossible to monitor at the bottom of the ocean, atop Antarctic glaciers, on other planets. Seismology is a very observation-based field, so a seismic network is a fundamental tool, he says.

Ive been interested in science since I was young, but wasnt sure what kind of science I wanted to do, Zhan says. In China, students usually have to decide on a field before they go to college, he adds, but I was fortunate. At age 15, Zhan was admitted to a special class for younger kids within the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. The program allowed him to try out different research fields. A nature lover, Zhan gravitated toward the earth sciences. Environmental science, chemistry, atmospheric science I tried all of them.

Then, in late 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake ruptured the seafloor under the Indian Ocean, spawning deadly tsunamis (SN: 1/5/05). After hearing from a researcher studying the quake, Zhan knew he wanted to study seismology. I was amazed by how seismologists can study very remote things by monitoring vibrations in the Earth, Zhan says. The data are just wiggles, complicated wiggles, but so much info can be extracted. And when we do it fast, it can provide a lot of benefit to society. CarolynGramling

Scientists and journalists share a core belief in questioning, observing and verifying to reach the truth. Science News reports on crucial research and discovery across science disciplines. We need your financial support to make it happen every contribution makes a difference.

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The first thought many sexually active people will have when their period is late is that they are pregnant. However, there are many reasons aside from pregnancy that your period may be late, or even missing altogether.

The process of ovulation and menstruation relies on a delicate balance of hormones, and if these hormones are thrown off even a little bit, it can cause you to have a late period.

This article breaks down nine reasons why your period may be late and what's happening biologically behind the scenes.

If you are exclusively breastfeeding your baby, it's common to experience amenorrhea, or, absence of a period.

This is because breastfeeding is associated with high levels of the hormone prolactin, says G. Thomas Ruiz, MD, OB/GYN Lead at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.

Elevated prolactin levels suppress the secretion of two hormones that are important for the menstrual cycle and ovulation: follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH).

Some people may not get their period again until they completely stop breastfeeding.

Stress doesn't just affect your mental wellbeing. It can also affect your hormones, throwing off the menstrual cycle.

Ruiz says when you're stressed, you have an increased level of the hormone cortisol also known as the stress hormone. Elevated cortisol will suppress LH secretion, which will in-turn affect ovulation.

Stress can also lower your levels of estrogen and progesterone hormones, which can make your period irregular.

Ruiz says it's not uncommon to experience a missed period in high-stress situations, such as during college final exams.

A consistent sleep schedule keeps your biological schedule consistent too. But when your sleep schedule is thrown off, the secretion of hormones is not as consistent and regular as it usually is, which in turn affects the secretion of reproductive hormones, says Evelyn Mitchell, MD, obstetrician and gynecologist with Keck Medicine of USC.

If your body isn't releasing the hormones associated with menstruation, then you could have a late or missed period.

Furthermore, lack of sleep can contribute to stress, which, again, will lead to an increase in cortisol, which can also affect your period's timing.

Mitchell says that exercising and eating very little can lead to extreme weight loss that can cause a missed or late period.

When losing weight, the brain may not secrete gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), Mitchell says. GnRH is a hormone that controls the secretion of other hormones released by the pituitary gland, including reproductive hormones like FSH and prolactin.

Because of this, your pituitary gland won't receive a signal that it needs to secrete reproductive hormones, and this will result in having a late or missed period.

Exercising too much is often associated with weight loss, which can lead to a late or missed period.

But even if you're at a consistent weight, excessive exercise, alone, can cause you to miss your period. Case in point, female athletes are more likely to have missed periods than non-athletes.

Just as weight loss can cause you to miss a period, so can weight gain, Mitchell says. Adipose tissue, or body fat, produces estrogen. So when you have excess weight, you have excess estrogen circulating in your body, which can interfere with the hormonal processes in your brain.

"Estrogen can give negative feedback to the brain that tricks the brain into thinking, 'Oh, maybe I don't need to secrete as much of this hormone,' and then that in turn causes a lack of ovulation and lack of periods," says Mitchell.

Additionally, if you are overweight and have chronically high estrogen levels, your brain may not sense increased estrogen production from the ovary when it comes time to ovulate, and then ovulation and menstruation will not occur, says Ruiz.

"Each woman seems to have a critical weight at which they may have trouble ovulating. Not all women with BMI between 30 to 35 will have ovulatory dysfunction. So women will do fine until they get to a BMI of 35, others will start having dysfunction at BMI of 33," says Ruiz.

When an overweight person loses weight and estrogen levels return to a more normal baseline, periods will likely return to normal.

Perimenopause is the time leading up to menopause when your period will completely stop. Usually, perimenopause occurs in your 40s.

When you are perimenopausal, your ovaries are running out of eggs, Ruiz says, and your levels of estrogen may be irregular. The amount of estrogen produced from cycle to cycle might not be enough to trigger ovulation and therefore menstruation.

Additionally, Mitchell says that perimenopause can sometimes prevent the ovaries from responding properly to estrogen, which could also delay menstruation. Though having regular periods is still possible during perimenopause, it may vary month to month because of changing hormone levels.

After a year of no periods, you are considered menopausal.

If you're having a late period and still getting enough sleep, are at a consistent, healthy weight, aren't severely stressed, and aren't premenopausal or breastfeeding, it's time to consider other possibilities like illness.

Some examples of underlying conditions that can affect the menstrual cycle are:

The most common cause for a late period in sexually active people is pregnancy.

When you are pregnant, you will not menstruate. Hormonally, pregnancy results in high levels of the hormone progestin, and high progestin suppresses ovulation, Ruiz says.

Your body will be releasing hormones and undergoing changes to accommodate the growing baby rather than releasing the hormones responsible for ovulating and menstruating.

The occasional late or missed period is normal and can be caused by a number of factors including stress, lack of sleep, overexercising, or significant changes in weight. But if you've missed three or more periods in a row, you have a condition called amenorrhea and should make an appointment with an OB-GYN.

Your doctor can help determine what the cause of your late or missing periods is and make sure that you don't have any underlying conditions, and get you back on track to having normal, regular periods.

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