tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74475444687923899362024-03-14T01:26:06.836-07:00CHIMERASAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09922888671399516573noreply@blogger.comBlogger507125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-85954288071870037132017-09-07T05:00:00.000-07:002017-09-07T05:00:23.195-07:00Guest post by Amy Rogers: Why do I need a flu shot every year?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4-F9eICNr3HzcD627hp3yy0o-alIDKR-2Wnr3OjzAZCthX_EvOjCddevrOmmMhECRSrlFjICzP-erDSIJNF0KA66LDA9NPuz27h3Yb_mJhbOQqS5B8EqhboXFaKhpd1XfS-InBhU7p0/s1600/The+Han+Agent+lores.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4-F9eICNr3HzcD627hp3yy0o-alIDKR-2Wnr3OjzAZCthX_EvOjCddevrOmmMhECRSrlFjICzP-erDSIJNF0KA66LDA9NPuz27h3Yb_mJhbOQqS5B8EqhboXFaKhpd1XfS-InBhU7p0/s320/The+Han+Agent+lores.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<i>Today's post is by guest blogger <a href="http://www.amyrogers.com/" target="blank">Amy Rogers</a>, scientist, publisher and novelist, who just released her latest medical thriller, <a href="http://www.sciencethrillersmedia.com/publish/han-agent/" target="blank">The Han Agent</a>.</i><br />
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When I was a kid, I got the chicken pox. In those days before the vaccine, this was a milestone in a child’s life. Once you survived the pox, you didn’t have to worry about getting it ever again. A single episode of this infection taught your immune system how to recognize the chicken pox virus and fight it off. For most people, this immunity lasts for life. Lots of naturally acquired immunity is like that. And most vaccines work for a long time. For example, you only need a tetanus shot every ten years.<br />
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So why should you get a flu shot every year? Are those evil drug companies just out to make a buck?<br />
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No. Blame the biology of influenza, the virus that causes the flu.<br />
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Influenza is highly changeable. It’s constantly mutating a little bit here and there. Small mutations in the virus’s two major identifying marker proteins, or antigens, are like a disguise. Your immune system is on the alert, watching for flu, but it fails to recognize the altered virus. Each year, each flu season, a slightly different version (actually several different versions) of the virus naturally appear and circulate around the globe. Your existing immunity against last year’s, or last decade’s, flu might not be enough to protect you this time.<br />
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Therefore, scientists keep an eye on influenza viruses in the wild year-round as they try to predict which versions are most likely to cause the next winter’s flu. Based on those predictions, vaccine manufacturers produce a cocktail of antigens for their seasonal flu vaccine.</blockquote>
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A genetically engineered pandemic flu virus is at he heart of Amy's latest medical thriller, <a href="http://www.sciencethrillersmedia.com/publish/han-agent/" target="blank">The Han Agent</a>, defined "exciting as it is frighteningly realistic" by James Rollins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sigma Force series, and "absolutely chilling” by Barry Lancet, award-winning author of The Spy Across the Table and Tokyo Kill. <br />
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<a href="http://www.amyrogers.com/" target="blank">Amy Rogers</a>, MD, PhD, is a Harvard-educated scientist, novelist, journalist, educator, critic, and publisher who specializes in all things science-y. Her novels Petroplague, Reversion, and The Han Agent use real science and medicine to create plausible, frightening scenarios in the style of Michael Crichton. <br />
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Han-Agent-Microes-Amy-Rogers-ebook/dp/B0711HWNHN/" target="_blank">Get The Han Agent on Amazon</a>, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-han-agent-amy-rogers/1126371243?ean=9781940419169" target="_blank">Barns and Nobles</a>, <a href="https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-han-agent" target="_blank">Kobo</a>, or <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-han-agent/id1234431059?mt=11&ign-mpt=uo%3D4" target="_blank">iBooks</a>.EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-483942633118718842017-04-23T21:31:00.000-07:002017-04-24T09:14:51.918-07:00Scientists are like LE officers. They protect our future and keep us safe.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This past Saturday, April 22, I was one of the tens of thousands of scientists marching across the country and the world to support science. In my community, we gathered a crowd of over 2,000 people. As one of the organizers, seeing so many people gather in the name of science was heart-warming and gratifying. People protested against budget cuts to the NIH and other agencies, against the gutting of the EPA, against the continuous denial of man-made global warming. We all returned to our quiet homes feeling energized.<br />
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My fuzzy warm feeling was short lived. On my way home I got a text message from a friend. “I hope you didn’t go to the march,” she wrote. The message arrived a little too late, obviously, but what truly saddened me was that it came from a dear friend, one whose work and life dedication I admire very much. You see, my friend is a police officer. Every day she puts her life on the line to protect us from crime, robbers, murderers, and terrorists.<br />
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My friend’s argument was, “The government can’t pay for everything.”<br />
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Yes, that is true. And yet no one in their right mind would ever argue that our tax dollars should not fund police agencies, federal investigation agencies, or law enforcement agencies. We all want to live in safe communities, and we know that it takes money and effort to keep our communities safe.<br />
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So why can’t we have the same mindset when we think of our scientists? <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm" target="_blank">Heart disease alone kills over 600,000 Americans every year and it’s the first leading cause of death in the United States</a>. Next comes <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics" target="_blank">cancer, which kills a little under 600,000 Americans every year</a>. Together, these two diseases kill over a million people in the US alone. <a href="http://www.alz.org/facts/" target="_blank">The fifth leading cause of death in adults over 65 years of age is Alzheimer’s disease</a>, for which we still don’t have a cure.<br />
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One hundred years ago dying of infection was common. Today, we defeat infections thanks to antibiotics, and we prevent deathly viruses thanks to vaccines. At the beginning of the 1900s <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm" target="_blank">one in three newborns died before they reached the first year of age</a>. Today, the infant mortality rate in the USA is 6 in 1,000 live births.<br />
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How did we get here? Thanks to publicly funded science. Your tax dollars. <b>Yes, the government has put a lot of money into medical research. But what people received back is priceless.</b> Try and put a price tag on a healthy, long life. Even diseases that still don’t have a cure have nonetheless gotten better treatments and prognosis. And the research on finding those cures is still moving forward. Do we really want to stop it now?<br />
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I’m not upset at my friend for what she told me. I’m upset at the current administration that cares so little for people that not only does it wants to cut funding to defeat the major killers of the American people (heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s), but they even claim it’s in the interest of all taxpayers.<br />
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<b>An administration that does not invest in the public’s health is an administration that does not care for the wellbeing and safety of its own citizens. </b>If we were to stop paying tax money for our local police departments, our communities would run havoc with crime and anarchy. Why don’t people perceive the same threat when the government plans huge budget cuts to the NIH? Do people really believe that acupuncture and grandma’s remedies cure everything? And if you think that private companies will take over the unfunded research, think again. <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/04/innovative-companies-get-their-best-ideas-from-academic-research-heres-how-they-do-it" target="_blank">Private companies get most of their ideas from publicly funded research</a>.<br />
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Another argument I’ve often heard is that a good portion of any agency’s budget gets wasted anyway. True. However, cutting the entire budget is NOT equivalent to cutting wastes. No system, whether mechanical, social, or biological is 100% efficient. For every breath we take, we use only 5% of the 21% oxygen contained in air. Yet cutting 16% of the oxygen in the air would NOT make us suddenly use 100%. In fact, it would kill us. The same goes for research.<br />
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So next time you file your taxes hoping that your tax dollars are going to improve your life and safety, think of medical research too. You wouldn’t be where you are today without it. Dr. Bette Korber said it beautifully in her inspirational speech at the March for Science in Santa Fe:<br />
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Dr. Korber is an immunologist with over 20 years of work in HIV vaccine research, the recipient of the Lawrence Award—the highest scientific honor from the Department of Energy—and a passionate advocate for the environment and water rights.<br />
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-8333365387205511942017-04-11T06:00:00.000-07:002017-04-11T06:00:58.594-07:00Looking for clues for past life on Mars<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaAqTIsB28rlCh9zhPRD747MnfR1AN8a22rDWHH9QV9v0lcupWkS_lS8SWlbA1pWyqORuVO0Y2TRAlEgxfnopnauO0nzfz4sBD414T0C6Eed11LkHMyG0L1O8kRSn3fvDqyPgVONohT8M/s1600/curiosity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaAqTIsB28rlCh9zhPRD747MnfR1AN8a22rDWHH9QV9v0lcupWkS_lS8SWlbA1pWyqORuVO0Y2TRAlEgxfnopnauO0nzfz4sBD414T0C6Eed11LkHMyG0L1O8kRSn3fvDqyPgVONohT8M/s320/curiosity.jpg" title="" width="299" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">NASA's Curiosity Mars. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS</span></td><td class="tr-caption"><br /></td></tr>
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On August 6, 2012, the NASA Curiosity rover landed on Mars at the base of Mount Sharp, a mountain the size of Kilimanjaro (~19,000 feet) in the middle of Gale Crater. Nina Lanza, space scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, remembers the day well. As part of the team that built ChemCam, one of the ten instruments on the rover, she spent three months at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, living on “Mars time” to follow Curiosity’s first “steps.” <br />
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ChemCam stands for “chemistry camera” and comprises a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument and a Remote Micro Imager (RMI). It was built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with the French space agency CNES. Nina Lanza and postdoctoral fellow Patrick Gasda are two of the Los Alamos scientists who work on the instrument. <br />
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“We get to shoot a laser on Mars for a living,” Lanza says, grinning.<br />
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And the laser on ChemCam is extremely powerful. When focused on a target, it vaporizes a small amount of material by heating Martian rocks to a temperature that’s roughly equivalent to that of the surface of the sun. “When we fire at a nearby target,” Gasda explains, “the elements get excited and, as they come down from that excited state, they emit light.”<br />
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By looking at the light emitted by the target, scientists can analyze the composition of rocks and soils on Mars. Previous Mars missions have found ice in the near-surface at high latitudes, begging the question: was there ever water on other parts of Mars at some point? And if there was—does that mean there could have been life, too?<br />
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With the very first laser shots from ChemCam, the answer was a definitive yes. “ChemCam discovered that all Martian dust is hydrated,” Lanza explains. “Given how dusty Mars is, this means that water is everywhere on the planet. We also found evidence that water was flowing in Mars’s past.” <br />
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“Gale Crater was filled with water,” Gasda adds. “From the sequence of sedimentary rocks we know of flowing streams in the crater that converged to a large body of still water that likely lasted for millions of years.”<br />
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“Curiosity gave us a picture of Gale Crater as an extremely habitable system,” Lanza continues. “We know that on Earth systems like this, with long-lasting neutral pH waters, would definitely support life.”<br />
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But how do you go about finding evidence for life? You search for clues, in other words, unique markers that identify biological activity.<br />
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“A potential marker could be manganese minerals,” Lanza says. In 2016 <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2016-161" target="_blank">Curiosity found rocks rich in manganese-oxides</a> at a location called Kimberley. “Manganese deposits in the terrestrial geological record mark the shift to higher concentrations of atmospheric oxygen due to the emergence of photosynthesis. This means that there could have been more oxygen in the Martian atmosphere in the past.” <br />
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Water. Oxygen. What about other building blocks of life? How do we look for those?<br />
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“<a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17628-found-first-amino-acid-on-a-comet/">Nucleic and amino acids have been found in space</a>,” Gasda tells me. “However, ribose—the ‘R’ in RNA, one of the first building blocks of life—and other sugars have never been found in space because they are too unstable. In order to have life, you need molecules that stabilize these sugars in water. Borates are particularly promising molecules for stabilizing sugars [1].”<br />
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Boron is highly soluble in water. In 2013 researchers from the University of Hawaii found boron in a meteorite from Mars [2]. That’s when Gasda became interested in this quest. “Once we knew that Gale Crater had once hosted a large body of water, it was natural to search for boron in those sediments.” <br />
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<a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21251" target="_blank">ChemCam did indeed find boron on Mars in 2016</a>. Together with the manganese oxides, this is still not sufficient evidence for life on Mars, but it shows that some of the raw ingredients were present. The scientists are primed to keep looking. Curiosity has been on Mars almost five years (or 1660 sols), and its data is helping researchers fine-tune the instruments for the next Mars rover, provisionally named Mars 2020, to be launched in July 2020. <br />
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“We need to look for biosignatures,” Lanza says. “And we may not find them. But if we don’t, to me, the most striking question would be: what if there were indeed all the ingredients for life on Mars, yet life never happened? What made Earth so unique that life could happen here but nowhere else?”<br />
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Gasda nods. “And if we are indeed unique, shouldn’t this make us feel more special, and make us more cautious about the way we treat our planet and our biodiversity?” <br />
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I mention the current political climate, with the planned budget cuts to scientific research, and the appalling denial of any intervention to curb global warming. <br />
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“These cuts to basic research are disheartening,” Lanza says. “People often think of NASA research as esoteric and out of touch. And yet almost everyone has GPS technology on their smart phones today, something we owe to space research. Take the electron as another example. I’m sure people in the nineteenth century found J. J. Thomson’s research on the electron to be highly academic, with few practical applications. Yet without his discovery we wouldn’t have electricity, and our lives today would be fundamentally different.” <br />
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“The best measure for progress,” Lanza concludes, “is when you can’t imagine the knowledge you are going to gain. Let the science surprise you.” <br />
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<i>Nina Lanza is a staff scientist, and Patrick Gasda is a postdoctoral research fellow, both in the Space and Remote Sensing group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. They are both on the science team for the Curiosity Mars rover mission. The opinions expressed here are their own and not their employer’s. Both will be speaking at the <a href="https://sciencemarchsfnm.com/" target="_blank">March for Science in Santa Fe</a>, New Mexico, on April 22nd. </i><br />
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[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Science&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1126%2Fscience.1092464&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Borate+Minerals+Stabilize+Ribose&rft.issn=0036-8075&rft.date=2004&rft.volume=303&rft.issue=5655&rft.spage=196&rft.epage=196&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencemag.org%2Fcgi%2Fdoi%2F10.1126%2Fscience.1092464&rft.au=Ricardo%2C+A.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CChemistry%2CPhysics">Ricardo, A. (2004). Borate Minerals Stabilize Ribose <span style="font-style: italic;">Science, 303</span> (5655), 196-196 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1092464" rev="review">10.1126/science.1092464</a></span><br />
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[2] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=PLoS+ONE&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0064624&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Boron+Enrichment+in+Martian+Clay&rft.issn=1932-6203&rft.date=2013&rft.volume=8&rft.issue=6&rft.spage=0&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fdx.plos.org%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0064624&rft.au=Stephenson%2C+J.&rft.au=Hallis%2C+L.&rft.au=Nagashima%2C+K.&rft.au=Freeland%2C+S.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Astronomy%2CBiology%2CChemistry%2CGeosciences%2CPhysics">Stephenson, J., Hallis, L., Nagashima, K., & Freeland, S. (2013). Boron Enrichment in Martian Clay <span style="font-style: italic;">PLoS ONE, 8</span> (6) DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064624" rev="review">10.1371/journal.pone.0064624</a></span><br />
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<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-78697328078417660242017-04-03T06:00:00.000-07:002017-04-03T08:48:32.192-07:00"Science is Under Attack." A Climate Scientist's Call to Action for the Future of our Planet. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAr2LeOPA5uJnG5T00clH2PwiZejcQY_J2BBNIUm_NZLJzz4Q2nAlchn9nK8wftQNl3mNsT4ilp1Id6ryt5rYUcqKLg2uGdkkqpnw6EQ1GGTLtPUirehXFQDrIZFayaY7U2nyEN0MpJCY/s1600/sim+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAr2LeOPA5uJnG5T00clH2PwiZejcQY_J2BBNIUm_NZLJzz4Q2nAlchn9nK8wftQNl3mNsT4ilp1Id6ryt5rYUcqKLg2uGdkkqpnw6EQ1GGTLtPUirehXFQDrIZFayaY7U2nyEN0MpJCY/s320/sim+copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida sans unicode" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif;">Ocean currents and eddies in a high-resolution global ocean simulation. Image courtesy of MPAS-Ocean Team.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #232323; font-family: "lucida sans unicode" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "lucida sans unicode" , "lucida grande" , sans-serif;"></span> </span></td></tr>
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It’s a foggy morning in London. Meteorologist George Simpson, the director of the British Meteorological Office, sips his tea and opens a paper authored by a scientist named Guy Stewart Callendar. The last sentence of the abstract reads, “The temperature observations at 200 meteorological stations are used to show that world temperatures have actually increased at an average rate of 0.005°C per year during the past half century.”<br />
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Simpson shakes his head and thinks, “Nonsense. It’s all a coincidence.”<br />
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If this seems like a modern-day scene over climate change, you’ll be surprised to know that Callendar published his paper in 1938. And of course, his results, linking a global trend in temperature rises to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, were received with a lot of skepticism. Almost 80 years later the debate is still ongoing.<br />
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“It is disheartening,” says Todd Ringler, climate scientist currently working at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “The reality is that there is no uncertainty about the basic premise of climate change. We know that CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span> concentrations are rising, we know why they are rising, and we know that CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span> tends to warm the atmosphere.”<br />
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In fact, this last effect — that CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span> warms the atmosphere — was shown by Irish physicist John Tyndall in 1859, over 150 years ago. But if the science on CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span> and its effect has been clear for so long, why does the public still have this preconception of uncertainty when it comes to global warming and climate change?<br />
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“There is essentially no doubt that temperatures are rising because of CO<span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span> concentrations,” Ringler explains. “The biggest uncertainty controlling global temperature in year 2100 is what our energy future will look like. In other words, we cannot estimate how much the temperatures will rise until we decide how dependent we want to be on fossil fuels going forward.”<br />
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“Basically what you’re saying,” I interject, “is that the largest uncertainty here is human behavior, because we still haven’t made up our mind on what, if anything, we want to do about global warming.”<br />
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“Exactly. <a href="http://nmpolitics.net/index/2017/02/our-government-is-failing-us-on-global-climate-change/" target="_blank">I recently republished an op-ed I wrote ten years ago</a> on the science and politics of global climate change,” Ringler says. “Unfortunately, 10 years later, the debate hasn’t changed, but all this litigation on the basic science is futile. The science is established, now we need to discuss policies.”<br />
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In his op-ed, Ringler has some stern words for our leaders: “Our government was failing us 10 years ago, and it's still failing us today by moving steadily away from a position of international leadership for crafting a comprehensive policy framework.”<br />
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“Why do you believe we still can’t come up with an agreement on this?” I ask.<br />
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Ringler sighs. “Humans have a long history of learning by experience, by trial and error. Take vaccines, for example. When we stop vaccinating, pockets of outbreaks resurface to remind us why we invented vaccines in the first place. Climate change happens over such a long time scale and carbon stays in the atmosphere for such a long time that we don’t have the luxury of learning by trial and error here. We have to get this right the first time, and we are not good at that. Day-to-day the biggest challenge we are facing when it comes to climate change is that we cannot pin down any single event to global warming. Weather is by its own nature random, but what global warming is doing is making certain random outcomes more likely than others. It’s shifting the roll of a dice, so to speak.”<br />
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And taken all together, these “random” events scattered across the globe are indeed making an impact: the ice caps have been steadily shrinking for the past 38 years of satellite records; the increasing amounts of CO2 retained by sea water are causing ocean acidification, harming marine organisms; weather patterns are becoming more severe, with stronger floods and longer droughts.<br />
<br />
“What do you see as the biggest challenge posed by the current administration?”<br />
<br />
“The current administration is ideologically opposed to regulations. But we need some rules, whatever they look like, to limit the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Look, renewable energy is happening. Take Texas, for example, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/which-state-is-a-big-renewable-energy-pioneer-texas-1472414098" target="_blank">which is pioneering wind energy</a>. Las Vegas is <a href="http://www.snopes.com/las-vegas-now-powered-entirely-renewable-energy/" target="_blank">now mostly powered by clean energy</a>. The very same oil companies we often think of as opposing regulations on carbon missions are <a href="http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-policy/climate-perspectives/our-position" target="_blank">actually advocating for us to take action</a>. But the problem is global and as such it requires global agreements and global solutions. It does matter what country emits the carbon, the carbon harms everyone. All nations need to come together and share the opportunities and costs of transitioning away from fossil fuels. What the current administration needs to understand is that what they see as ‘regulations’ are in fact ‘protections’ that we need to put forward to safeguard our future and our children’s future.”<br />
<br />
“What pains me the most,” Ringler continues, “is the disconnect between science and policy. We have this disconnect between knowing something and acting accordingly. Knowledge has lost its primary role in our society, and now science is under attack. This is not healthy. A healthy society is one in which the knowledge we gather through science informs the policy making.”<br />
<br />
As Ringler wrote in his op-ed, “We owe it to ourselves and to future generations to ask the following question: What if our present understanding of global climate change is correct? What does this mean for our society? What will happen to water in the already arid West? What will happen to agriculture, both here and around the world? Can developing nations accommodate these changes? And if not, how will we deal with the climate-driven conflict that will surely follow?”<br />
<br />
<i>Dr. <a href="http://www.toddringler.me/" target="_blank">Todd Ringler</a> has 25 years of experience modeling the climate of the atmosphere and ocean. He studied at Cornell and Princeton University, then joined the research faculty at Colorado State University and is presently a scientist working at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is member of the International CLIVAR Ocean Model Development Panel and a long-time advocate for sensible solutions to address climate change impacts. The views and opinions expressed here are Todd Ringler’s own thoughts on this subject. He will be speaking at the <a href="https://sciencemarchsfnm.com/" target="_blank">March for Science in Santa Fe, New Mexico</a> on April 22nd. </i><br />
<br />
<b>REFERENCES</b><br />
<br />
[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Quarterly+Journal+of+the+Royal+Meteorological+Society&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1002%2Fqj.49706427503&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=The+artificial+production+of+carbon+dioxide+and+its+influence+on+temperature&rft.issn=00359009&rft.date=1938&rft.volume=64&rft.issue=275&rft.spage=223&rft.epage=240&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fdoi.wiley.com%2F10.1002%2Fqj.49706427503&rft.au=Callendar%2C+G.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Chemistry%2CPhysics%2CEnvironmental+Chemistry%2C+Thermodynamics">Callendar, G. (1938). The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature <span style="font-style: italic;">Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 64</span> (275), 223-240 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/qj.49706427503" rev="review">10.1002/qj.49706427503</a></span><br />
<br />
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-44567653441071335182017-02-24T08:06:00.000-08:002017-02-24T08:06:55.695-08:00What if black holes were not... holes? A Los Alamos physicist explains his alternative theory behind these mysterious objects. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmL1vUaXNAbjmXfwZvK439-n_EKBTy6AFcgQceXUbFFlKgeqO8XFvt8L336thqnBpGvH97O-xL7-jOBJognpLFcUz3wBVrgqRnIH_-9O4gW_YLf4WoC25a0a1oc1KyDtCBAN5Gf9krOF0/s1600/AUG_201-milkyway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmL1vUaXNAbjmXfwZvK439-n_EKBTy6AFcgQceXUbFFlKgeqO8XFvt8L336thqnBpGvH97O-xL7-jOBJognpLFcUz3wBVrgqRnIH_-9O4gW_YLf4WoC25a0a1oc1KyDtCBAN5Gf9krOF0/s320/AUG_201-milkyway.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© Elena E. Giorgi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The concept of a “black hole” — a celestial body so dense and massive that not even light can escape its gravitational field — dates back to the 18th century, with the theoretical work of Pierre-Simon Laplace and John Michell. But it wasn’t until the early 20th century that these mysterious dark objects were first described mathematically by German physicist Karl Schwarzschild. Schwarzschild’s work predicted the existence of a finite distance around the black hole (called the “event horizon”) from which light cannot escape. <br />
<br />
Emil Mottola, a physicist in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, laughs as he explains this bit of history behind black holes. “Would black holes have captured the popular imagination if they were still known as Schwarzschild’s solution?” he quips. Mottola has a point. The name “black hole” was coined by the American physicist John Wheeler in the 1960s, when these objects became the subject of serious study and first entered the popular vocabulary.<br />
<br />
“And then of course, Stephen Hawking made black holes very popular with his own research and theory of black hole radiation,” Mottola adds. “To this day,” he explains, “black holes are far from being understood, and science fiction may have taken over from science fact. We can’t answer many of the most important questions without knowing what the internal states of a black hole are, but no one has ever been inside a black hole, so no one actually knows what is inside.”<br />
<br />
One particularly vexing feature of black holes is the so-called “information paradox.” In 1974, Stephen Hawking theorized that black holes emit small amounts of radiation (called Hawking radiation). However, if this is true, black holes should eventually evaporate due to the loss of mass, leaving no way—not even in principle—to recover the information that was originally enclosed in it. This question alone has generated hundreds of research papers with still no completely satisfactory resolution. <br />
<br />
In 2001, Mottola and his colleague Pawel O. Mazur proposed an alternative to Hawking’s black hole theory that eliminates the paradox. “Think of a black hole as having a physical surface,” Mottola says. He imagines this surface to be much like a soap bubble that bends and fluctuates in space. <br />
“Our idea is that quantum effects build up right at the event horizon (the bubble’s surface), leading to a phase transition. This in turn creates a gravitational repulsive force inside the “bubble” that prevents the surface from collapsing. This repulsive force is the same ‘dark energy’ force believed to cause the expansion of the universe. We call these objects Gravitational Condensate Stars or ‘Gravastars’— celestial objects that would be compact, cold and dark, and look to astrophysicists just like ‘black holes,’ although they are not ‘holes’ at all. Our hypothesis does not contradict the conservation of information because there is no infinite crushing of space and time inside a Gravastar, and information is never destroyed.”<br />
<br />
According to Mottola, the mathematical equations Hawking used to describe the temperature of a black hole are in reality describing the surface tension of a Gravastar. “If we assume that black holes have a temperature, then they need to have an enormous entropy too, but we can’t easily explain that enormous black hole entropy. In our theory, black holes don’t have a temperature, they have surface tension, like soap bubbles. In 2015 we showed that this possibility of a surface and surface tension was already inherent in Schwarzschild’s original formulation of black hole interiors in 1916, and so is consistent with both Einstein’s General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.”<br />
<br />
As I look over my notes, I pose Dr. Mottola one final question: “Is there any way to find out who’s right, you or Stephen Hawking?”<br />
<br />
He smiles because he knows that whatever Hawking says these days carries a lot of weight, including when he proposes that black holes could be mysterious portals to other universes. <br />
“I believe we may well find out the answer in the next five to ten years,” Mottola says. “If ‘black holes’ actually are Gravastars with a surface, their surface oscillations would cause them to emit gravitational waves at certain frequencies, which is a substantially different signal than that expected from the black holes that Hawking and colleagues theorize. LIGO directly detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015, so we have just entered a new era of gravitational wave astronomy. In a few years, we may have enough data from the gravitational waves detected by LIGO and its sister observatories to be able to resolve the conundrum.”<br />
<br />
Needless to say, the Los Alamos scientist is very excited at that prospect. <br />
<br />
<b>References</b><br />
[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Proceedings+of+the+National+Academy+of+Sciences&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.0402717101&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Gravitational+vacuum+condensate+stars&rft.issn=0027-8424&rft.date=2004&rft.volume=101&rft.issue=26&rft.spage=9545&rft.epage=9550&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcgi%2Fdoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.0402717101&rft.au=Mazur%2C+P.&rft.au=Mottola%2C+E.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Physics%2CAstrophysics">Mazur, P., & Mottola, E. (2004). Gravitational vacuum condensate stars <span style="font-style: italic;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101</span> (26), 9545-9550 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0402717101" rev="review">10.1073/pnas.0402717101</a></span><br />
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[2] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Acta+Physica+Polonica+B+%282010%29+Vol.41%2C+iss.9%2C+p.2031-2162&rft_id=info%3Aarxiv%2F1008.5006v1&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=New+Horizons+in+Gravity%3A+The+Trace+Anomaly%2C+Dark+Energy+and+Condensate%0D%0A++Stars&rft.issn=&rft.date=2010&rft.volume=&rft.issue=&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Emil+Mottola&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Physics%2CAstrophysics">Emil Mottola (2010). New Horizons in Gravity: The Trace Anomaly, Dark Energy and Condensate<br />
Stars <span style="font-style: italic;">Acta Physica Polonica B (2010) Vol.41, iss.9, p.2031-2162</span> arXiv: <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.5006v1" rev="review">1008.5006v1</a></span><br />
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[3] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Classical+and+Quantum+Gravity&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1088%2F0264-9381%2F32%2F21%2F215024&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Surface+tension+and+negative+pressure+interior+of+a+non-singular+%E2%80%98black+hole%E2%80%99&rft.issn=0264-9381&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=32&rft.issue=21&rft.spage=215024&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fstacks.iop.org%2F0264-9381%2F32%2Fi%3D21%2Fa%3D215024%3Fkey%3Dcrossref.e11596174274f56524f721787efbe1b2&rft.au=Mazur%2C+P.&rft.au=Mottola%2C+E.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Physics%2CAstrophysics">Mazur, P., & Mottola, E. (2015). Surface tension and negative pressure interior of a non-singular ‘black hole’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Classical and Quantum Gravity, 32</span> (21) DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0264-9381/32/21/215024" rev="review">10.1088/0264-9381/32/21/215024</a></span><br />
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<span style="float: left; padding: 5px;"><a href="http://www.researchblogging.org/"><img alt="ResearchBlogging.org" src="https://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_white.png" style="border: 0;" /></a></span>EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-92004878109477197442016-12-17T07:59:00.000-08:002016-12-17T21:53:32.167-08:00We are the "educated elite" they won't listen to<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9SPg0oXg1dzmMw6dqNxv8NGqxGZQOxZjqRw0f3VvE7wMOihrd5V1TYOz__33T8DBaaNOz9_agTth9ILfEQmPxhp89CtZiv9r_k9U47DdoQUHLFnXPj7LkCwNSkxLidRii4zHag8nRgFo/s1600/AUG_029-orchids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9SPg0oXg1dzmMw6dqNxv8NGqxGZQOxZjqRw0f3VvE7wMOihrd5V1TYOz__33T8DBaaNOz9_agTth9ILfEQmPxhp89CtZiv9r_k9U47DdoQUHLFnXPj7LkCwNSkxLidRii4zHag8nRgFo/s320/AUG_029-orchids.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Why did Trump win the 2016 presidential election? Since November 9, many people have been asking the same question. Some say it was because Clinton wasn’t likable enough. Others blame the fact that we didn’t understand the white working class and we believed too many fake news and conspiracy theories. <br />
<br />
Yes, those are just some of the answers. There are many more, of course, and political scientists and historians will debate this election for decades to come. But I’ve reached a point where I’ve had enough of reading how everyone else is feeling about this election. I need to say how I feel about it. Because I’m not the white working class woman who lost her job, I’m not Muslim, I’m not Mexican, and yes, I’m an immigrant but the privileged kind if you will. I’ve always been legal and now I am, in fact, a citizen. <br />
<br />
I am the educated elite to whom it’s ok to say, “Your college degree doesn’t make you smarter.” The one who tries to counter-argue using scientific sources, real numbers, and logic, and yet all she gets back in response is name-calling and ridicule.<br />
<br />
And if you are reading this blog, I know you are part of that same group of people who strive to educate themselves and improve their knowledge, the group of people now clumped under the umbrella term of "educated elite." So you know exactly what it feels like to be in a strange society where beliefs overcome centuries of scientific and ideological progress. It feels like the doctor who’s been telling his patients to go on a diet and quit eating junk food. We all want to be healthy and fit, yet when it boils down to making the effort, many shrug off the scientific evidence that bad eating habits and no exercise harm our health. We’re all gonna die anyway, right?<br />
<br />
No, a college degree doesn’t make anyone smarter. Critical thinking does. And while for many things a college degree is not even needed, there are others—like health, science, and the environment for example—for which those extra years of education provide perspective and deeper understanding of those fields in particular. So when a person with a college degree or equivalent experience tells us something about the field they've studied, I think we should listen. What kind of society have we become when we no longer trust scientists when they tell us that greenhouse gases are causing the ocean temperatures to rise? Or when we no longer listen to our doctors when they say that a vaccine can save our children’s life? <br />
<br />
There was a time when education was revered and school teachers were respected. A time when people listened to educators and doctors because they had spent decades studying and gaining their knowledge. A time when scientists were heroes because they got us to the moon and physicians saved lives with vaccines. Today, I tell my kids to study because otherwise they’ll never get a good job, and what do they reply? “Mom, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out of college.” Or, even better: “Mom, YouTubers make millions of dollars and they never have to go to college.”<br />
<br />
The Internet has it all. Because anyone can contribute to the Internet, it has all the answers your doctor will never give you, all the science your religion allows you to believe, and a perfect world that beautifully matches your so called values. Why bother with education? Evolution isn’t real, it’s just a theory. We don’t need educated people telling us how old the earth is. We don’t need educated people injecting stuff in our kids’ arms claiming it’ll save their lives. We don’t need educated people telling us that the climate is changing—it’s been changing all throughout the 6,000 years the earth has been around.<br />
<br />
Just so we’re clear, what I did in those last three sentences is called sarcasm. Because I did go to school, for many years, in fact. I went to college and then to graduate school. I got my PhD while I was raising two young children. I worked my ass off, I suffered through many failures, I received many rejection letters and yet I kept plowing along, learning from my mistakes, working through the adversities. No, you don't need a college degree to achieve that. Any kind of hard work makes people stronger. Learning from our mistakes and taking responsibilities makes us grow. And it teaches to respect one other.<br />
<br />
But no, America doesn’t need any of that. America keeps binging on junk food and relying on whatever the Internet has to offer. So now teachers are indoctrinating our kids, scientists are conspiracy theorists who enjoy telling us that the world will end, and doctors are vaccine impostors paid by the Big Pharma. (On a side note, vaccines are cheap, they don’t make the Big Pharma rich. What makes them rich are all the drugs you need when you get the diseases you could’ve vaccinated against.) <br />
<br />
Who needs educated people when we can do stuff on our own? This, you see, has been this election’s winning message. And that’s exactly why the incoming cabinet features a secretary of education who wants to dismantle public education; a national security adviser who tweets fake news; a secretary of treasury who ran a bank that was dubbed the “foreclosure machine”; an EPA administrator who doesn’t believe in environmental policies and doesn’t believe in climate change. If you think about it, it’s like all these people, instead of being rightfully shamed for their failures, have been rewarded with the highest positions in the government. All because we no longer trust education, let alone if it comes from the establishment. Can you hear your teenage kid’s voice? “Get out of the way, Mom. I can do stuff on my own, now!”<br />
<br />
Truth is, the secretary of energy for the past two terms has been a PhD. In fact, our previous secretary of energy was a Nobel laureate. These bright minds will now be succeeded by a BS in animal science and Dancing with the Stars contestant. I’m sure those stardom experiences will come in handy when talking to scientists and engineers about the state of our nuclear weapons and climate change policies. Oh wait. I forgot, the guy doesn’t believe in climate change. So I’m sure he doesn’t believe in investing money in basic research to address questions like, “Why are our trees dying?” or “Is there going to be enough water for our growing cities twenty years from now?” or “How are we going to sustain our agriculture when we’ll run out of water?” or “Can we make more potent antibiotics in order to fight drug resistant bacteria?”<br />
<br />
And if you are wondering, all those questions do pertain the US Department of Energy. DOE oversees national security labs like the one where I work. My colleagues and I work hard everyday on questions like the ones I mentioned above because drug-resistant bacteria and water problems are among the greatest threats our society is facing today. Ill-minded people can easily get a hold of these problems and turn them into bioweapons. But don’t worry, I’m sure the Internet holds all the answers. <br />
<br />
Nelson Mandela once said, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." I want you to think about that for a moment. What do Mandela's words say about a country where college education is so expensive that many can no longer afford it? And even worse, a country where a good chunk of the population does not trust college education? Knowledge is freedom. Ignorance, instead, is the shackles used by tyrannic powers.<br />
<br />
And so America gulps down another mouthful of fat hamburger with fries, washed down with corn syrup based soda. Because no matter how many times we tell America to go on a diet (i.e. invest in renewable energy), no matter how many times we lecture America about the risks of high blood pressure (i.e. stop fracking and drilling before all of our drinking water ends up contaminated), and no matter how many times we remind America that the number one cause of death in the US is heart failure (i.e. temperatures are indeed rising and we’re all going to die if we don’t do something about it), America has decided that we are the educated elite and no longer deserve to be listened to. <br />
<br />
So good luck America. In a world too busy to take the time to ponder, too loud to stop to listen, and too arrogant to realize its own ignorance, the educated elite is all you’ll have left when catastrophe will strike. And in the best of Hollywood traditions, we will be there to come to the rescue. <br />
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Until then, God help us all.<br />
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<i>Thank you to Kat Fieler and Mike Martin for helpful suggestions while editing this post. All opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone. I respect yours, please respect mine. </i>EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-91138126823248466432016-10-05T05:00:00.000-07:002016-10-05T05:00:18.522-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><i>This is a monthly event started by the awesome <a href="http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Alex J. Cavanaugh</a> and organized by the <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/" target="blank">Insecure Writer's Support Group</a>. Click <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html" target="blank">here</a> to find out more about the group and sign up for the next event. You can also sign up for the <a href="http://insecurewriterssupportgroup.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b058c62fa7ffb4280355e8854&id=cc6abce571" target="_blank">newsletter</a>. Our cohosts this month: <b>Beverly Stowe McClure, Megan Morgan, Viola Fury, Madeline Mora-Summonte, Angela Wooldridge, and Susan Gourley</b>.</i><br />
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Hello All, happy fall and happy Halloween month! <br />
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First off, if you haven't heard about the anthology contest, check it out: the deadline is November 1st! <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/2016/09/announcing-2016-iwsg-anthology-contest.html" target="_blank">Rules, theme and other important details on the ISWG page</a>.<br />
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My post this month is going to be short and I apologize if I won't be able to reciprocate the comments until later in the week since I'm currently at a conference (and my presentation is today, wish me luck!).<br />
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October question: <b>When do you know your story is ready?</b><br />
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It's hard to give an objective answer to that question since a story is ready when it "feels" ready. But since for a writer the hardest thing is to judge his/her own work, my strategy has been to write a first draft, then go back and refine, then go back and edit, then go back and send it to trusted beta readers. Sometimes a beta reader will come up with a suggestion that does not resonate, but most of the times, my trusted betas have good suggestions and after those improvements I usually feel that the story is ready. <br />
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How about you, what's your strategy?<br />
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-80689218921574470312016-09-09T06:47:00.002-07:002016-09-09T06:47:19.085-07:00Pictures from the California CoastI love the Pacific coast. It's simply gorgeous from Mexico all the way to Alaska. Over my last trip to California I was rewarded with some really nice sunsets. Here are my latest pictures, and as always, you can get prints from my website <a href="http://www.elenaegiorgi.com/">www.elenaegiorgi.com</a><br />
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Enjoy!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elenaegiorgi.com/Landscapes/American-Southwest/i-TKfs4mb/A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPNQ7Pwi6G-fFgMvGfuNVG6HdJIm3ISthWRhP9VlkoPLtHZ5ghQ8eiL3qwtVGl5fCbuSlk_pxlkjv_0c0ugCtOJvuKKZ2DxEYMIZJKxYoRwNLW0A-TV5CuAZfLYgn1JC-feup-pLK7bk/s320/SEP_006-santaBarbara-3.jpg" width="230" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goleta, CA</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elenaegiorgi.com/Landscapes/American-Southwest/i-zXQ9S2b/A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDP_GwRUpyh5DUAfzD0_QWhLsYzbgMCxn3j2O1nI1Y-NYaOZymtS_pnsrjvTpUEP5O9zQ3MKx_M8YJpJ3p7WIXIO0guHaPrrWqEyZx14WuC52Hi-RwHDorH7Gv_bcTkGPYimjk94YF-X8/s320/SEP_006-santaBarbara-6.jpg" width="229" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goleta, CA</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elenaegiorgi.com/Landscapes/Seasscapes/i-8rZJTBD/A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiafa913eZMNf-wZd3RenBIcW1DEwZMaglWxOvjcTDbngc__wVIE01wcw8I9dFDi6DHx-u1iKgx34JTSrQJXa19ntgeBbkxEQm7sgNUMC-AKi7Pzt7a-PTwGxNQo1nXMldiolIc2WZmeFc/s320/SEP_008-Cambria.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cambria, CA</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elenaegiorgi.com/Landscapes/Seasscapes/i-J2tkTmC/A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJMWh89x2v27woa2LSeIdUbvZmNHAsUZ0D35CO_9gns6hP-4bviME6RkphuivGF6c8ZcxK39bV1Jh9G6yPrqsAJ9Fbnqx0xh8c9fpFr9dTvGjdu7pJ8L3z9QNFvGBm0V1WAiYu15GfWWw/s320/SEP_018-Cambria.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cambria, CA</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elenaegiorgi.com/Landscapes/American-Southwest/i-mmZch2f/A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioFPOUJiPygUZxDKo4H6tr7hjl2okdx8k0z3xr4wHcdm2nwooRTMbc_SWCMFy_4sBh5LUjvnYMBGNRQti6b5zGi0Q9HvpsLcmqdhBEF1uJRuYC_cBJfulFRxRKS_BHXBJtdoWOHdeGktQ/s320/SEP_024-lonelyCypress.jpg" width="221" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pebble Beach, CA</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.elenaegiorgi.com/Landscapes/American-Southwest/i-QQQwGKC/A" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif5eQyDNXbKFDiw26SjdQwPs9YmbNuD9n5w6QDPpnGt614-EH-sjUwHK0is0H9aTCJyZ7Qo82q2Lw9N-Y5yAJsXjaWEJk3kyppr-SpCYwIKbX8nMQxCjmzDynjv4m1tIIP04tlvngLvsU/s320/SEP_040-PointLobos-20.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Point Lobos, CA</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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And the best part? As we were strolling along the beach in Carmel we spotted bottlenose dolphins! Aren't they adorable??<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfrpFS2SnGuI_0tCuUi1box6AVE5fX9ZRQY-w3e2TqKrUqg0zIh-bjxj8TOceLpY7OTFHB8TVLQu_boi9UhQONxDElaOQ-wJdxaQSBzwYi_6_FHF6WOselNys612eOvg2KzNGFeJXgR0/s1600/SEP_035-bottlenoseDolphin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfrpFS2SnGuI_0tCuUi1box6AVE5fX9ZRQY-w3e2TqKrUqg0zIh-bjxj8TOceLpY7OTFHB8TVLQu_boi9UhQONxDElaOQ-wJdxaQSBzwYi_6_FHF6WOselNys612eOvg2KzNGFeJXgR0/s320/SEP_035-bottlenoseDolphin.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-21931027793138678882016-09-07T03:00:00.000-07:002016-09-07T03:00:10.163-07:00September IWSG: have you been taking care of your newsletter?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>This is a monthly event started by the awesome <a href="http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Alex J. Cavanaugh</a> and organized by the <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/" target="blank">Insecure Writer's Support Group</a>. Click <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html" target="blank">here</a> to find out more about the group and sign up for the next event. You can also sign up for the <a href="http://insecurewriterssupportgroup.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b058c62fa7ffb4280355e8854&id=cc6abce571" target="_blank">newsletter</a>. Our cohost this month: <b>C. Lee McKenzie, Rachel Pattison, Elizabeth Seckman, Stephanie Faris, Lori L MacLaughlin, and Elsie Amata</b>.</i><br />
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Hello fellow writers, my big news this month is that we launched the new anthology <a href="http://smarturl.it/AtGalaxysEdge" target="_blank">Beyond the Stars: at the Galaxy's Edge</a>, featuring my story <b><i>The Quarium Wars</i></b>, and it was a great success! I'm really excited and stoked to be part of this project. Now onward to finish the book that's actually set in the world of my short story.<br />
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Which brings me to this month's question: <b>How do you find the time to write in your busy day?</b><br />
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My answer is very simple. I don't. Fall is particularly busy for me because on top of my daily work I get a lot of requests for portrait session -- which is VERY good, don't get me wrong, I LOVE doing portrait sessions -- and so guess what happens to my manuscripts? They're left behind. Le sigh.<br />
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In other news, I'm working on revamping my website and newsletter. Newsletters are very important when you are trying to grow your business. In fact, they are like plants: you have to keep watering and nurturing it. There are many providers out there, and so far I've used MailChimp, which has been very good except for two drawbacks: (1) emails to gmail users go to the promotional tab and may never be read/seen; (2) when you start getting more than 1,000 subscribers it becomes very expensive.<br />
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So I've looked into other providers, but it's a bit of a pain migrating. The good news is that for most of them you can sign up for free and test them out before you start paying. What provider do you use? And are you happy with it?<br />
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Until next time!<br />
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<a href="http://smarturl.it/AtGalaxysEdge" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjObiGSadNmB2OnCqkb3RX7_v15G6eSc4-wV2S6umOMwcMFJJryR2ylqxDCku2yldWwt-Sd1YPdsm1EniXLfdjzl9QXzKFkUzC1ysuERgCpmKimQGb6pMiu8YiJ8FnWSaQSAjXE4Arg2X0/s320/Untitled2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-1321696198427600572016-08-03T03:00:00.000-07:002016-08-03T06:41:27.151-07:00August IWSG post<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>This is a monthly event started by the awesome <a href="http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Alex J. Cavanaugh</a> and organized by the <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/" target="blank">Insecure Writer's Support Group</a>. Click <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html" target="blank">here</a> to find out more about the group and sign up for the next event. You can also sign up for the <a href="http://insecurewriterssupportgroup.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b058c62fa7ffb4280355e8854&id=cc6abce571" target="_blank">newsletter</a>.</i><br />
<br />
Howdy, I'm back after some traveling, which is why I was absent last month (apologies). I hope everyone in the group is having a wonderful summer (winter for those of you in the southern hemisphere). And if the heat and nice weather is keeping you from writing (*coughs*), be nice to yourself because you never know where your next inspiration will be. Maybe your muse is calling from the beach, what do you know? ;-)<br />
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Jokes aside, I've been beating myself up, actually, because all I've produced this year so far are three short stories, and while two of them were slated to go in anthologies, both anthologies have been delayed. So, if you are in a similar situation, don't despair: here's my good news that may inspire you and keep you from giving up. A wonderful opportunity opened up last month and my third story was accepted for an anthology that's coming out this month, so yay! And one of those two anthologies that got delayed was mentioned recently on the <a href="http://www.tor.com/" target="_blank">TOR website</a> as <a href="http://www.tor.com/2016/07/20/speculative-fiction-in-translation-15-works-to-watch-out-for-in-2016/" target="_blank">one of the 15 books to watch for in 2016</a> -- so double YAY! (It's at the very bottom, Zero Machine by <a href="https://www.acheronbooks.com/index.php" target="_blank">Acheron Books</a>, but still, the fact that it was even mentioned is super cool, I was happy dancing all over the place!)<br />
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So now I've to go back to that space opera that I was supposed to finish two months ago... What about you? What projects are keeping you busy these days? Stay inspired!<br />
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<i>On a different note: Together with a bunch f authors we are hosting a mega-giveaway with lots of prizes, including a $50 Amazon gift card! For more details <a href="http://chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com/2016/07/sci-fi-summer-fling-win-50-gift-card.html" target="_blank">please see this post</a>.</i><br />
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<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-46714442647420683892016-07-29T11:56:00.000-07:002016-07-29T21:04:18.168-07:00The Abandoned AsylumI had the unique privilege to visit an abandoned asylum and here are the images I made so far. I have so many more, I will be busy compositing until next year. :D<br />
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<a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Portfolio/New-Beginnings/i-mnBrNrW/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYb5d_1nnYSSE7KzULuqSdCzdfZkNczpgoUxhqxkHbQtX8NzV8MzgkrOaImSzIWNeu7s1vP4nL4ePCKrbsFmCFEqfoeDtHIKluU1shzQfNmR2A8KLD6WKNnqPTFbXU9kSZpkv5apP5S6Y/s320/JULY_032-Volterra-FallenAngel.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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For the above I downloaded the wings made by Deviant Art artist "<a href="http://thy-darkest-hour.deviantart.com/art/Winged-Fantasy-V-2-Golden-304389688" target="_blank">Thy Darkest Hour</a>".<br />
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-89588993620796114242016-07-24T03:45:00.001-07:002016-07-24T03:45:40.702-07:00Sci-Fi Summer Fling, win a $50 gift card and lots of sci-fi books!<style>
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-18910529826244424502016-06-03T08:04:00.001-07:002016-06-03T08:04:23.215-07:00I'm in love with our mountainsAnother post on the beauty of the Jemez Mountains, in Northern New Mexico. For the record, I actually grew up by the sea and I miss my morning strolls along the beach. But it's hard not to fall in love with these views. This was by the San Antonio River. The water flows at the bottom of a canyon, and the cliffs around them yield stunning views.<br />
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I didn't upload all of the pictures on my website, so if you are interested in prints please email me (<a href="http://elenaedi.smugmug.com/" target="_blank">contact info here</a>).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Landscapes/New-Mexico/i-sSpq4nz/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0c5oq9Ot0lZUHMwZUOl2vnCIFWX-sY42VNNVsV1kK5oTgulnN6NS1R8icRmpT-gGTGrk6w7cj23fIy60_d4B5wKbKNRnHKw7t3p3jMuOgQT-nbvrSSyU4_P7znguQvjgJRTEIUfstOXY/s320/JUN_007-jemez.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© Elena E. Giorgi</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiCnJkpEWUxwNnf7NXJ2iuDDZqt1-GX9fT-TjBEfU0Z6VBidlGjsR3XYHysqckIEL8swDwG_30ogZegwSuwXIzHqXXmFmoKOpbI11tYhT1xyy4pxwNhDSiWTEWiswDQfU8LX4MPDu1jM4/s1600/JUN_006-jemez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiCnJkpEWUxwNnf7NXJ2iuDDZqt1-GX9fT-TjBEfU0Z6VBidlGjsR3XYHysqckIEL8swDwG_30ogZegwSuwXIzHqXXmFmoKOpbI11tYhT1xyy4pxwNhDSiWTEWiswDQfU8LX4MPDu1jM4/s320/JUN_006-jemez.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© Elena E. Giorgi</td></tr>
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As the sun went down it started drizzling and the fine layer of clouds diffused the sunset light creating beautiful pink hues in the sky. It was magical! :-)<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Landscapes/New-Mexico/i-TcWtvwZ/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidk5HB4zcTyH2bxLeZYrFFisIqZ-MicMzJ8hxAkB-pK6gbzxgRpI5vmB2LegIb9CKcoG9YdA0G8SJbB6PUBpenr2eoI_wLpVHjR1bzSEkbFKAlCiBjMr0OsFblXifsAgvt05Oh7NXImsU/s320/JUN_001.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© Elena E. Giorgi</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3dJ0F2k1h64R6w62MCqWE9kH3YL-0IsRPPGW2Aqgsm_02QA0fqUZFMKPN9K36yNM_RrGUA1HC04FSHluaPhB8WtyePRlGh0tno_ecBZdiQG1b4wJJQSYaT4yR23A4s2SAy3kyPUlfiE/s1600/JUN_002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3dJ0F2k1h64R6w62MCqWE9kH3YL-0IsRPPGW2Aqgsm_02QA0fqUZFMKPN9K36yNM_RrGUA1HC04FSHluaPhB8WtyePRlGh0tno_ecBZdiQG1b4wJJQSYaT4yR23A4s2SAy3kyPUlfiE/s320/JUN_002.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© Elena E. Giorgi</td></tr>
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-8308612155884410742016-06-01T03:00:00.000-07:002016-08-01T18:02:47.176-07:00June IWSG: an inspirational story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><i>This is a monthly event started by the awesome <a href="http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Alex J. Cavanaugh</a> and organized by the <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/" target="blank">Insecure Writer's Support Group</a>. Click <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html" target="blank">here</a> to find out more about the group and sign up for the next event. You can also sign up for the <a href="http://insecurewriterssupportgroup.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b058c62fa7ffb4280355e8854&id=cc6abce571" target="_blank">newsletter</a>.</i><br />
<br />
This month I want to share a little episode that happened to me because I found it to be a great inspiration, and I hope you'll find it inspirational too. <br />
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You have to know that I'm not exactly pretty. Never been. Let's just say that beauty is not my gift. But, but, but, I'm healthy, and I have no missing body parts. I would never replace or cut or mar in any way my appearance in the name of beauty because there are so many people out there who are missing a leg or a hand or have crippling genetic conditions, so imagine how disrespectful it would be toward those people to go under the knife in the name of esthetics. So I compensate with art. I do photography, I write. I try to do beautiful things. <br />
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Wait, wait, I actually have a story to tell you, so don't start saying, "Awww, but you're beautiful inside," because you know what reply that will prompt: "Who the hell's gonna come and turn me inside out??" *grin*<br />
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Back to my story. I have a friend at work who's really beautiful. She has one of those perfect faces that never age and know no flaws. A few weeks ago we went out to lunch together and out of the blue she told me, "I envy you."<br />
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I almost fell off my chair. I said, "What are you talking about, Kate? Did you take a good look at me? And did you take a good look at the mirror? How can somebody as beautiful as yourself envy _me_?"<br />
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She shook her head. "You don't understand. This" -- she pointed to herself -- "I had nothing to do with this. I have only my parents to thank for their good genes. But you -- you have talents. And you take full credit for those talents."<br />
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I was taken by such surprise that I didn't know what to reply. So I hugged her and thanked her. <br />
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Why did I tell you this? Because we all hate some things of ourselves. We all have insecurities. But maybe sometimes we have to learn to look at ourselves with somebody else's eyes and be more forgiving. We are fairly good at forgiving others, so let's learn to do the same with ourselves. :-)<br />
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-89628763174277799982016-05-27T08:00:00.000-07:002016-05-27T08:00:01.024-07:00The viruses inside us<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Classes_of_ERVs.svg/2000px-Classes_of_ERVs.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Classes_of_ERVs.svg/2000px-Classes_of_ERVs.svg.png" width="278" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dendogram of endogenous retroviruses. Source: Wikipedia.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Last month I posted <a href="ttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/elena-e-giorgi/ice-caps-melt-prehistoric_b_9805334.html?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science">a discussion on a PNAS paper</a> that reported the discovery of a new class of viruses, called pithoviruses, found in a layer of Siberian permafrost. In their paper [1], the researchers conclude:<br />
<blockquote>"Our results further substantiate the possibility that infectious viral pathogens might be released from ancient permafrost layers exposed by thawing, mining, or drilling."</blockquote>I found this possibility intriguing both from a scientific point of view as well as a sci-fi point of view: there are plenty of books out there on zombies and aliens, but what about ancient viruses that thawed from the ice thanks to global warming?<br />
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An attentive reader, though, didn't buy the sci-fi "threat" and asked in the comments whether viruses are necessarily bad. Normally we think of viruses as pesky little things. And while most will make us sick for a short time only, some can indeed be deadly, and others can inflict long-term complications. <br />
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The reader who asked that question, however, is absolutely right: over the course of evolution, viruses have been beneficial to us. Viruses have driven genetic diversity by transferring genes across species, and in fact, we still carry remnants of viral genes in our DNA, comprising roughly 8-10% of our genome. They are called "endogenous retroviruses", or ERV.<br />
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In the rest of this post I will address two questions:<br />
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<ul><li>What are those viral genes doing in our genome?</li>
<li>How did they get there?</li>
</ul><br />
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<strong> What are viral genes doing in our genome? </strong><br />
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Most of them are doing nothing. They are "deactivated", meaning they do not code for proteins. Our genome is made of many redundant elements that over the course of evolution were silenced because no longer useful, only to be turned on again later on when a new adaptation happened. <br />
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One such example is the placenta, where endogenous retroviruses have been found to be expressed [2-4] and play a role in the growth and implantation of the tissue. We can only speculate on why retroviral genes are expressed in the placenta, but the hypothesis is indeed quite interesting: in order to survive, retroviruses debilitate the immune system. In general, this is not a good thing for the body, except in one very special instance: an embryo is literally a parasite growing inside the mother's body. It carries extraneous DNA and, under normal circumstances, something carrying extraneous DNA would be considered an antigen and attacked by the immune system. Therefore, the expressed viral proteins found in the trophoblasts, the outer layer of the placenta, would have the role of suppressing a possible immune reaction against fetal blood.<br />
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Another property viruses have is that of cell fusion: they literally "merge" cells together into one membrane. A second hypothesis is that this property is used during the development of the placenta to build a barrier between the maternal circulation and the fetal circulation.<br />
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<strong> How did viral genes end up in our genome? </strong><br />
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A virus enters the body of a host with the sole purpose of replicating. In order to do so, viruses hijack the cell's own replicating machinery. Retroviruses in particular carry strands of RNA which, once injected inside the cell, are turned into DNA that is then carried inside the cell nucleus and integrated into the cell's genome. This ensures that once the cell replicates, the bit of viral DNA is replicated too. <br />
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There is a special set of cells, however, such that when the virus infects them it literally gets stuck. These cells are the gametocytes, a.k.a. oocytes in women, and spermatocytes in men, which do not duplicate unless they get fertilized. But by then the virus is no longer active. It's literally stuck, in the sense that the integrated viral DNA now cannot replicate and cannot escape the host's DNA. It's just a bit of non-functional DNA that gets duplicated along as the embryo grows. The new individual now carries the viral genes in every cell of his/her body, even in the gametocytes, and hence the viral genes will be inherited by future generations as well.<br />
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And that's how viruses ended up in our genome a long, long time ago and have literally become "evolutionary fossils." In fact, by looking at these endogenous retroviral sequences, scientists are able to reconstruct the evolution of ancient viruses. <br />
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<strong> References </strong><br />
<br />
[1] Legendre, M., Bartoli, J., Shmakova, L., Jeudy, S., Labadie, K., Adrait, A., Lescot, M., Poirot, O., Bertaux, L., Bruley, C., Coute, Y., Rivkina, E., Abergel, C., & Claverie, J. (2014). Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (11), 4274-4279 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1320670111<br />
<br />
[2] Emerman M, & Malik HS (2010). Paleovirology--modern consequences of ancient viruses. PLoS biology, 8 (2) PMID: 20161719<br />
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[3] Dunlap KA, Palmarini M, Varela M, Burghardt RC, Hayashi K, Farmer JL, & Spencer TE (2006). Endogenous retroviruses regulate periimplantation placental growth and differentiation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103 (39), 14390-5 PMID: 16980413<br />
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[4] Dupressoir A, & Heidmann T (2011). [Syncytins - retroviral envelope genes captured for the benefit of placental development]. Medecine sciences : M/S, 27 (2), 163-9 PMID: 21382324EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-48117993729325410322016-05-15T11:35:00.000-07:002016-05-15T11:39:56.810-07:00To all of you who think New Mexico is all desert ... ... think again! ;-)<br />
The Jemez mountains are covered in ponderosa pines and rivers like Rio Puerco give rise to the beautiful waterfalls we scouted with some photographer friends this past week-end. Enjoy!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Seasscapes/i-b8R98G5/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCntaGaUPJBEVo1W8LV91c-NcruLHXAhxSFJQS12UlZxn3AXjJw-qAR_CmBz7O9bMDdABMcDcFgkk_NYzdR_ogacIm8O5weYGpXJIS6FSsTcbWUlJgHvGc8EkPKSy1rQaR67f9JUUU6cI/s320/MAY_034-waterfalls.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">© Elena E. Giorgi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Monochrome/i-TRWZbzX/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmvysCDOjH0HIekgwTEBuLpFP4guVvirk-rbwLRx2Rro-cN8l02En7-bX6yVNyXHpGykquyPBtzlRVKRQyXK4UnHKYvZFAIqV4hvw3hL1qG6N7QY1qHACw96_s9w-Pnw_ymSqbcqGBK6o/s320/MAY_037-waterfalls-BW.jpg" width="243" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">© Elena E. Giorgi</span></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Seasscapes/i-RqjpDS7/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoIOGXgnQlUthyg3fUvo2HJuV7lVpCAqvt1t9lgXS2ndMgs3Fc6cE7Cl_Mmaq_Z9q8CpO7iIy7H_VRcogTOBCtFd1j4mJjF5ulDOAxmCu7_HF1OZqzg5JiuvQGn4U_NTSX54oD3C6R0S4/s320/MAY_030-waterfalls.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">© Elena E. Giorgi</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Seasscapes/i-4vcWnxT/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkw7Ci7RQFMFyACt9O0MXj0CGB2VIYAadGBviGC1NzfdXcfb1QcIrF0xCuWnuLn3cZKF4XrOsfIRgKuV0a2XA99aMfw95ywFd-06FSNeRUIPFs6hyphenhyphen8IGuf-LM8DwGJAP1qSC-imTQ38u8/s320/MAY_031-waterfalls.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">© Elena E. Giorgi</span></td></tr>
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<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-3350635809832387992016-05-13T06:21:00.000-07:002016-05-13T06:21:39.699-07:00Using Supercomputers to Probe the Early Universe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/WMAP2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/WMAP2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artist's depiction of the WMAP satellite gathering data to understand the Big Bang. Source: NASA.</td></tr>
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For decades physicists have been trying to decipher the first moments after the Big Bang. Using very large telescopes, for example, scientists scan the skies and look at how fast galaxies move. Satellites study the relic radiation left from the Big Bang, called the cosmic microwave background radiation. And finally, particle colliders, like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, allow researchers to smash protons together and analyze the debris left behind by such collisions. <br />
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Physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, however, are taking a different approach: they are using computers. In collaboration with colleagues at University of California San Diego, the Los Alamos researchers developed a computer code, called BURST, that can simulate a slice in the life of our young cosmos. <br />
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While BURST is not the first computer code to simulate conditions during the first few minutes of cosmological evolution, it can achieve better precision by a few orders of magnitude compared to its predecessors. Furthermore, it will be the only simulation code able to match the precision of the data from the Extremely Large Telescopes currently under construction in Chile. These new telescopes will have primary mirrors that range in aperture from 20 to 40 meters, roughly three times wider than the current very large telescopes, and an overall light-collecting area up to 10 times larger. <br />
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A few seconds after the Big Bang, the universe was composed of a thick, 10-billion degree "cosmic soup" of subatomic particles. As the hot universe expanded, these particles' mutual interactions caused the universe to behave as a cooling thermonuclear reactor. This reactor produced light nuclei, such as deuterium, helium, and lithium — all found in the universe today. "Our code, developed with Evan Grohs, who at the time was a graduate student at UCSD, looks at what happened when the universe was about 1/100 of a second old to a few minutes old," says Los Alamos physicist Mark Paris of the Theoretical Division. "By determining the amount of helium, lithium and deuterium at the end of those first few minutes of life, BURST will be able to shed light to some of the existing puzzles of cosmology."<br />
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One such puzzle is dark matter: physicists know that such matter exists because of the way galaxies rotate, but they haven't been able to detect it because it does not radiate in any known spectrum. Physicists have theorized that dark matter is made of so-called "sterile neutrinos", which do not interact with any other particle and are responsible for these unobservable interactions. "Once we start getting data from the Extremely Large Telescopes," Paris explains, "we will model sterile neutrinos into the BURST code. If we get a good description, we will be able to prove their existence." <br />
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Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation have led physicists to theorize "dark radiation," a speculative form of energy that may have acted in the early universe. BURST could possibly reveal whether or not dark radiation is real and caused by sterile neutrinos. "The universe is our laboratory," Paris enthusiastically concludes. "BURST will help us answer questions that are currently very difficult to address with particle colliders like the one at CERN."<br />
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Ongoing support for the project is provided by the National Science Foundation at UCSD and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program through the Center for Space and Earth Sciences at Los Alamos. BURST will be running on the supercomputing platforms at Los Alamos National Laboratory.<br />
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<b>Reference</b><br />
<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Physical+Review+D&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1103%2FPhysRevD.93.083522&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Neutrino+energy+transport+in+weak+decoupling+and+big+bang+nucleosynthesis&rft.issn=2470-0010&rft.date=2016&rft.volume=93&rft.issue=8&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Flink.aps.org%2Fdoi%2F10.1103%2FPhysRevD.93.083522&rft.au=Grohs%2C+E.&rft.au=Fuller%2C+G.&rft.au=Kishimoto%2C+C.&rft.au=Paris%2C+M.&rft.au=Vlasenko%2C+A.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Mathematics%2CPhysics%2CParticle+Physics%2C+Precision+Measurement%2C+Theoretical+Physics%2C+Astrophysics">Grohs, E., Fuller, G., Kishimoto, C., Paris, M., & Vlasenko, A. (2016). Neutrino energy transport in weak decoupling and big bang nucleosynthesis <span style="font-style: italic;">Physical Review D, 93</span> (8) DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.083522" rev="review">10.1103/PhysRevD.93.083522</a></span><br />
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<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-32942244068766597152016-05-04T03:00:00.000-07:002016-05-04T09:06:48.922-07:00May IWSG: Spring is finally here!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCk9zI_Xq6vLp7gODQVeYubPuBQV1zJLdsO4HGnKQH45EKqnmnG6N_g5W_gHKpHmp0TwFezhiV9yw8gBHVJ2fAL7l7s70f1MGTOdJFKRI5JA6lOI0ZFQ9TYD2dvHhUReGODsiCZuziLH4/s1600-r/Insecure+Writers+Support+Group+Badge.jpg" height="313" width="320"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><i>This is a monthly event started by the awesome <a href="http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Alex J. Cavanaugh</a> and organized by the <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/" target="blank">Insecure Writer's Support Group</a>. Click <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html" target="blank">here</a> to find out more about the group and sign up for the next event. You can also sign up for the <a href="http://insecurewriterssupportgroup.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b058c62fa7ffb4280355e8854&id=cc6abce571" target="_blank">newsletter</a>.</i><br />
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First off a big announcement: the IWSG anthology, titled Parallels: Felix Was Here, is here! Featuring 10 stories from ISWG authors, hand-picked by a panel of agents and writers, you can now get it <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Parallels-Felix-L-G-Keltner-ebook/dp/B01BI04FFQ/" target="_blank">from Amazon</a> and other retailers. <a href="http://parallelsanthology.blogspot.com/2016/05/parallels-is-here.html" target="_blank">Complete list of purchasing links here</a>.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNoXIFVrhIEQ5R_JuPb1gVMBMynDiOyI7k2O3BJvQlYbzux2wv13BugyosKtDdzouNFosivtH2zbJ4kX0CNDBSUx8i4Nrq9pzWzRyUySfUs0jo9yfpGQHVKHAjTtcGAZ4ZBWK3-dt6RhO/s1600-r/Parallels+Felix+Was+Here+Anthology.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuNoXIFVrhIEQ5R_JuPb1gVMBMynDiOyI7k2O3BJvQlYbzux2wv13BugyosKtDdzouNFosivtH2zbJ4kX0CNDBSUx8i4Nrq9pzWzRyUySfUs0jo9yfpGQHVKHAjTtcGAZ4ZBWK3-dt6RhO/s1600-r/Parallels+Felix+Was+Here+Anthology.jpg" height="320" width="215"></a></div><br />
It's May already, can you believe it? How was your month of April, did you do the A-Z challenge? Already making plans for the summer? <br />
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My April wasn't too bad: I'm wrapping up a project at work and I finished a short story which will be the prequel to a new world I'm creating. It's a space opera and I'm very excited about it mostly because... I've never written space opera before! :-) Here's a question for you: would you release a prequel as soon as it's ready or would you wait until the first installment in the series is ready to be released too?<br />
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In other news, we've had some very much needed moisture in Northern New Mexico and so I took the chance and shot some droplet macros. :-) Happy May everyone!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://elenaedi.smugmug.com/Flowers/Colors/i-MBsxCqJ/A" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMWmlKIx9yG9Nn7hL1sCwQmbmawgt03Z7O0hXt5v4Cm8OMki-wWIQp2WGOoLmz2xFjCx7W_BHdN884YTGeJj-nvkpo-iLTgGc_XsNDsvehgPrGIp1aVwGDaY2yWGz9cHC2T18hLAadN8/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-05-04+at+10.05.35+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-15331592263513044072016-04-29T06:38:00.000-07:002016-04-29T06:39:51.805-07:00Hunting For The Signatures of Cancer<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://sangerinstitute.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/signatures_body.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://sangerinstitute.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/signatures_body.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "droid sans" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0048px; line-height: 14.3942px;">Signatures of Mutational Processes Extracted from the Mutational Catalogs of 21 Breast Cancer Genomes. Credit:</span><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2012.12.008" rel="nofollow" style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Droid Sans', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11.0048px; line-height: 14.3942px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2012.12.008</a></td></tr>
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<br />
<strong>Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide</strong>, with approximately 14 million new cases and 8.2 million cancer related deaths each year (Source: <a href="http://www.who.int/en/" target="_blank">WHO</a>). A family history of cancer typically increases a person's risk of developing the disease, yet most cancer cases have no family history at all. This suggests that a combination of both genetics and environmental exposures contribute to the etiology of cancer. In this context, "genetics" means the genetic make-up we are born with and inherited from our parents. For example, women born with specific mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are known to have a much higher risk of developing breast cancer later in life.<br />
<br />
However, besides the genetic make-up we carry from birth, there are many geographical and environmental factors that contribute to the risk of cancer. For example, the incidence of breast cancer is over 4 times higher in North and West Europe compared to Asia and Africa (Source: <a href="http://www.who.int/en/" target="_blank">WHO</a>). Stomach cancer, on the other hand, is much more prevalent in Asia than the US. If you think that this may be linked to the genetic differences across ethnicities, think again. The <a href="http://seer.cancer.gov/archive/studies/surveillance/study5.html" target="_blank">National Cancer Institute</a> published a summary of several studies that compared the incidence of first and second generation immigrants in the US with the local population. They found that:<br />
<blockquote>
"cancer incidence patterns among first-generation immigrants were nearly identical to those of their native country, but through subsequent generations, these patterns evolved to resemble those found in the United States. This was true especially for cancers related to hormones, such as breast, prostate, and ovarian cancer and neoplasms of the uterine corpus and cancers attributable to westernized diets, such as colorectal malignancies."</blockquote>
According to the <a href="http://www.who.int/en/" target="_blank">World Health Organization (WHO)</a>, <br />
<blockquote>
"around one third of cancer deaths are due to the 5 leading behavioral and dietary risks: high body mass index, low fruit and vegetable intake, lack of physical activity, tobacco use, alcohol use."</blockquote>
<strong>Cancer is the result of a series of cellular mechanisms gone awry</strong>: every time a cell divides, somatic mutations accumulate in the cell's genome. These are not mutations we are born with, inherited from our parents. Rather, these are changes that accumulate in certain cells as we grow old and are not the same across all cells in the body. Many environmental exposures contribute to this process and affect the rate at which these mutations accumulate. However, cells have various mechanisms that are normally able to repair harmful mutations or, when the damage is beyond repair, to trigger cell death. The immune system is also "trained" to recognize cancer cells and destroy them.<br />
<br />
When all these defense mechanisms fail, cancer cells start dividing uncontrollably.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As a result, all cancer cells carry a number of somatic mutations that set them apart from healthy cells, and some tend to be the same across different cancer patients: for example, specific mutational patterns found in lung cancer have been attributed to tobacco exposure and were indeed reproduced in animal models. Another set of mutations has been attributed to UV exposure and has been found in skin cancers [1, 2].</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This prompts the ambitious question: can we find common mutations across individuals with the same cancer? And how many of these mutational patterns that are common across individuals can we attribute to particular exposures and/or biological processes? Distinguished postdoctoral researcher Ludmil Alexandrov, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been working on this problem since his he was a PhD student at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.</div>
<br />
"It's like lifting fingerprints," Alexandrov explains. "The mutations are the fingerprints, but now we have to do the investigative work and find the 'perpetrator', i.e., the carcinogens that caused them." During his graduate studies, under the supervision of Mike Stratton of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Alexandrov developed a mathematical model that, given the cancer genomes from a number of patients, is able to pick the "common signals" across the patients -- i.e. mutation patterns that are common across the patients -- and classify them into "signatures." <br />
<br />
"When formulated mathematically," Alexandrov explains, "the question can be expressed as the classic 'cocktail party' problem, where multiple people in a room are speaking simultaneously while several microphones placed at different locations are recording the conversations. Each microphone captures a combination of all sounds and the problem is to identify the individual conversations from all the recordings." Taking from this analogy, each cancer genome is a "recording", and the task of the mathematical model is to reconstruct each conversation, in other words, the mutational patterns. These are sets of somatic mutations that are the observed across the cancer genomes and that characterize certain types of cancers.<br />
<br />
In 2013, Alexandrov and colleagues analyzed 4,938,362 mutations from 7,042 patients, spanning 30 different cancers, and extracted more than 20 distinct mutational signatures [2]. "Some patterns were expected, like the known ones caused by tobacco and UV light," Alexandrov says. "Others were completely new."<br />
<br />
Of the new signatures found, many are involved in defective DNA repair mechanisms, suggesting that drugs targeting these specific mechanisms may benefit cancers exhibiting these signatures [3]. But the most exciting part of this research will be finding the 'perpetrator' or, as Alexandrov explains, the mutations triggered by carcinogens like tobacco, UV radiation, obesity, and so on. The challenge will be to experimentally associate these mutational patterns to the exposures that caused them. In order to do this, the scientists will have to expose cultured cells and model organisms to known carcinogens and then analyze the genomes of the experimentally induced cancers.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, the signatures found so far are only the beginning: Alexandrov and colleagues have teamed up with the Los Alamos High Performance Computing Organization in order to analyze the genomes of almost 30,000 cancer patients. <br />
<br />
"The amount of data we will have to handle for this task is enormous, on the order of petabytes," Alexandrov says. "Few places in the world have the capability to handle this many data. Under normal circumstances, it takes months to answer a question on 10 petabytes of data. The supercomputing facility at Los Alamos can provide an answer within a day." <br />
<br />
Because of his research, in 2014 Alexandrov was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the “30 brightest stars under the age of 30” in the field of Science and Healthcare. In 2015 he was awarded the <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/site/feature/data/prizes/scilifelab/index.xhtml">AAAS Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists</a> in the category Genomics and Proteomics [2] and the Weintraub Award for Graduate Research. He is now the recipient of the prestigious Oppenheimer fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory.<br />
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<strong>References</strong><br />
<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=CA%3A+A+Cancer+Journal+for+Clinicians&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.3322%2Fcaac.21254&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Cancer+statistics%2C+2015&rft.issn=00079235&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=65&rft.issue=1&rft.spage=5&rft.epage=29&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fdoi.wiley.com%2F10.3322%2Fcaac.21254&rft.au=Siegel%2C+R.&rft.au=Miller%2C+K.&rft.au=Jemal%2C+A.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CCancer%2C+Epidemiology%2C+Computational+Biology%2C+Cell+Biology%2C+Bioinformatics%2C+Molecular+Biology%2C+Genetics">Siegel, R., Miller, K., & Jemal, A. (2015). Cancer statistics, 2015 <span style="font-style: italic;">CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, 65</span> (1), 5-29 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3322/caac.21254" rev="review">10.3322/caac.21254</a></span><br />
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[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Science+%28New+York%2C+N.Y.%29&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F26785464&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Understanding+the+origins+of+human+cancer.&rft.issn=0036-8075&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=350&rft.issue=6265&rft.spage=1175&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Alexandrov+LB&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CGenetics+%2C+Computational+Biology%2C+Cell+Biology%2C+Bioinformatics%2C+Molecular+Biology%2C+Epidemiology%2C+Cancer">Alexandrov LB (2015). Understanding the origins of human cancer. <span style="font-style: italic;">Science (New York, N.Y.), 350</span> (6265) PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26785464" rev="review">26785464</a></span><br />
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[2] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Nature&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F23945592&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Signatures+of+mutational+processes+in+human+cancer.&rft.issn=0028-0836&rft.date=2013&rft.volume=500&rft.issue=7463&rft.spage=415&rft.epage=21&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Alexandrov+LB&rft.au=Nik-Zainal+S&rft.au=Wedge+DC&rft.au=Aparicio+SA&rft.au=Behjati+S&rft.au=Biankin+AV&rft.au=Bignell+GR&rft.au=Bolli+N&rft.au=Borg+A&rft.au=B%C3%B8rresen-Dale+AL&rft.au=Boyault+S&rft.au=Burkhardt+B&rft.au=Butler+AP&rft.au=Caldas+C&rft.au=Davies+HR&rft.au=Desmedt+C&rft.au=Eils+R&rft.au=Eyfj%C3%B6rd+JE&rft.au=Foekens+JA&rft.au=Greaves+M&rft.au=Hosoda+F&rft.au=Hutter+B&rft.au=Ilicic+T&rft.au=Imbeaud+S&rft.au=Imielinski+M&rft.au=J%C3%A4ger+N&rft.au=Jones+DT&rft.au=Jones+D&rft.au=Knappskog+S&rft.au=Kool+M&rft.au=Lakhani+SR&rft.au=L%C3%B3pez-Ot%C3%ADn+C&rft.au=Martin+S&rft.au=Munshi+NC&rft.au=Nakamura+H&rft.au=Northcott+PA&rft.au=Pajic+M&rft.au=Papaemmanuil+E&rft.au=Paradiso+A&rft.au=Pearson+JV&rft.au=Puente+XS&rft.au=Raine+K&rft.au=Ramakrishna+M&rft.au=Richardson+AL&rft.au=Richter+J&rft.au=Rosenstiel+P&rft.au=Schlesner+M&rft.au=Schumacher+TN&rft.au=Span+PN&rft.au=Teague+JW&rft.au=Totoki+Y&rft.au=Tutt+AN&rft.au=Vald%C3%A9s-Mas+R&rft.au=van+Buuren+MM&rft.au=van+%27t+Veer+L&rft.au=Vincent-Salomon+A&rft.au=Waddell+N&rft.au=Yates+LR&rft.au=Australian+Pancreatic+Cancer+Genome+Initiative&rft.au=ICGC+Breast+Cancer+Consortium&rft.au=ICGC+MMML-Seq+Consortium&rft.au=ICGC+PedBrain&rft.au=Zucman-Rossi+J&rft.au=Futreal+PA&rft.au=McDermott+U&rft.au=Lichter+P&rft.au=Meyerson+M&rft.au=Grimmond+SM&rft.au=Siebert+R&rft.au=Campo+E&rft.au=Shibata+T&rft.au=Pfister+SM&rft.au=Campbell+PJ&rft.au=Stratton+MR&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CGenetics+%2C+Bioinformatics%2C+Computational+Biology%2C+Epidemiology%2C+Cancer">Alexandrov LB, Nik-Zainal S, Wedge DC, Aparicio SA, Behjati S, Biankin AV, Bignell GR, Bolli N, Borg A, Børresen-Dale AL, Boyault S, Burkhardt B, Butler AP, Caldas C, Davies HR, Desmedt C, Eils R, Eyfjörd JE, Foekens JA, Greaves M, Hosoda F, Hutter B, Ilicic T, Imbeaud S, Imielinski M, Jäger N, Jones DT, Jones D, Knappskog S, Kool M, Lakhani SR, López-Otín C, Martin S, Munshi NC, Nakamura H, Northcott PA, Pajic M, Papaemmanuil E, Paradiso A, Pearson JV, Puente XS, Raine K, Ramakrishna M, Richardson AL, Richter J, Rosenstiel P, Schlesner M, Schumacher TN, Span PN, Teague JW, Totoki Y, Tutt AN, Valdés-Mas R, van Buuren MM, van 't Veer L, Vincent-Salomon A, Waddell N, Yates LR, Australian Pancreatic Cancer Genome Initiative, ICGC Breast Cancer Consortium, ICGC MMML-Seq Consortium, ICGC PedBrain, Zucman-Rossi J, Futreal PA, McDermott U, Lichter P, Meyerson M, Grimmond SM, Siebert R, Campo E, Shibata T, Pfister SM, Campbell PJ, & Stratton MR (2013). Signatures of mutational processes in human cancer. <span style="font-style: italic;">Nature, 500</span> (7463), 415-21 PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23945592" rev="review">23945592</a></span><br />
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[3] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Nature+communications&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F26511885&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=A+mutational+signature+in+gastric+cancer+suggests+therapeutic+strategies.&rft.issn=&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=6&rft.issue=&rft.spage=8683&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Alexandrov+LB&rft.au=Nik-Zainal+S&rft.au=Siu+HC&rft.au=Leung+SY&rft.au=Stratton+MR&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CBioinformatics%2C+Computational+Biology%2C+Cancer%2C+Epidemiology%2C+Genetics+%2C+Molecular+Biology">Alexandrov LB, Nik-Zainal S, Siu HC, Leung SY, & Stratton MR (2015). A mutational signature in gastric cancer suggests therapeutic strategies. <span style="font-style: italic;">Nature communications, 6</span> PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26511885" rev="review">26511885</a></span><br />
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<span style="float: left; padding: 5px;"><a href="http://www.researchblogging.org/"><img alt="ResearchBlogging.org" src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_white.png" style="border: 0;" /></a></span>EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-82470292524806314802016-04-22T07:10:00.000-07:002016-04-22T07:10:25.406-07:00Digging For Clues About Climate Change<i><b>Guest post by Rebecca McDonald, science writer</b></i><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-0lZ4dz9OBLJ4a93b93YfuzXE0Om67a3-Lz3xYkRNnjSVZ3POjinFhR5C4zoDcpQs-XkoUlvA3vsLMgqIp325QebBbFCvpjmL4nmQ_Dxq6dOTVqp6r8TZz-nMN3gGQoT996LLjFdTUno/s1600/dirt-1663-pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-0lZ4dz9OBLJ4a93b93YfuzXE0Om67a3-Lz3xYkRNnjSVZ3POjinFhR5C4zoDcpQs-XkoUlvA3vsLMgqIp325QebBbFCvpjmL4nmQ_Dxq6dOTVqp6r8TZz-nMN3gGQoT996LLjFdTUno/s400/dirt-1663-pic.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo Credit: LeRoy N. Sanchez </td></tr>
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While many scientists who study climate change look up to the sky for clues about the Earth’s future, one researcher has spent her career looking down—at the abundance of life in the soil below. Innumerable microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi live in harmony with plant roots, decomposing fallen leaves and dead animals. In addition to acting as the ultimate recyclers, they also stabilize the soil and help to retain water. <br />
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Cheryl Kuske, a microbiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has focused the last two and a half decades on studying this microbial environment. “By decomposing organic matter,” she explains, “microorganisms help cycle carbon and nitrogen through the ecosystem.” Some of the carbon and nitrogen released from the organic matter goes into the soil and is assimilated into roots to help new plants grow—the carbon is incorporated into sugars, and the nitrogen atoms are used to build proteins. But some of these molecules are also released as CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> and N<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> gases into the atmosphere. <br />
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The soil ecosystem functions in a delicate balance. Although some organisms release gases into the air, others—including certain bacteria and leafy plants—remove harmful CO<span style="font-size: xx-small;">2</span> from the atmosphere for food production. <br />
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Kuske and her colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory have been investigating the roles of these microbes in carbon and nitrogen cycling to help make better predictions about terrestrial ecosystem responses to climate change. Using a technique called metagenomics to sequence the DNA of all the microbes at once, the team can study the organisms’ genes and the enzymes they produce. <br />
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These microrganisms’ lifecycles are so intertwined that their single genomes cannot be isolated for sequencing. However, analyzed jointly, they yield important clues about their collective functions in the environment. Scientists can identify things such as which bacteria or fungi are responsible for fixing nitrogen or carbon, the ratio of bacteria to fungi in the soil, and which microbes are closely associated with root health or plant growth. The researchers can even figure out which enzymes are currently being used through a technique called meta-transcriptomics; this approach sequences only the transcripts of genomic data that are actively being made and used for protein synthesis.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhisPXiqrcGba8W23FPhjzSuyZTi18-rKrhMk2ZqcP0NJqxQgVzOcjvY_TXGReOcLa4BCWaHHsSp3ZXfbWnGmBdK5oqa6lFCBlM1Oea1WZ3Iuk53SCPNSt37c-KswX6dqHH9c8UoL46NQI/s1600/biocrust-close.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhisPXiqrcGba8W23FPhjzSuyZTi18-rKrhMk2ZqcP0NJqxQgVzOcjvY_TXGReOcLa4BCWaHHsSp3ZXfbWnGmBdK5oqa6lFCBlM1Oea1WZ3Iuk53SCPNSt37c-KswX6dqHH9c8UoL46NQI/s400/biocrust-close.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of Cheryl Kuske</td></tr>
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<b>By sampling microbes from various soil environments over long periods of time, Kuske’s team and collaborators are able to understand what happens under the surface when things change aboveground. </b> For instance, in a recent long-term study in Utah, the scientists discovered that slight changes in the summer precipitation pattern, combined with a 2°C rise in soil temperature, resulted in significant changes in the population of microbes below: the types of organisms completely changed, thus altering their overall role in the environment. For example, cyanobacteria—bacteria that create energy through photosynthesis—were no longer present. As a consequence, the new population of microbes no longer had the ability to pull carbon out of the air and had a decreased capacity for fixing nitrogen for protein synthesis. <br />
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Increased nitrogen from industrial runoff or fertilizer from agriculture can also have significant effects on the composition of organisms in the soil, as nitrogen is an essential molecule for the growth of both plants and bacteria. A comparison of 15 recent field experiments where nitrogen deposition was measured showed that in an arid environment, an increase in nitrogen had a positive effect on soil health at low concentrations, but too much was toxic to the soil community [1]. In a field experiment in Nevada, higher nitrogen concentrations changed the species composition of bacteria—but not fungi—leading to a fungi-dominated community [2,3]. <br />
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Although the ramifications of these changes to the microbial world are not yet completely understood, Kuske’s team is continuing their studies, both in the laboratory, under controlled conditions, as well as at various field sites in the American Southwest. What they do know is that the feedback loop is strong. Changes in the aboveground environment—such as rising temperatures, altered precipitation, and increased nitrogen runoff—lead to changes below ground that can have far-reaching consequences.<br />
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“The studies being conducted at Los Alamos provide an understanding of the interactive biological processes that are inherent in all types of terrestrial ecosystems and that tightly control carbon and nitrogen fluxes to the atmosphere,” says Kuske. Climate warming and altered weather patterns will disrupt this balance. <b>When the diversity of soil microbes change, the feedback loops that ensue could have lasting effects on the amounts of carbon and nitrogen in the soil and the atmosphere.</b><br />
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<i><b>Rebecca McDonald</b> is a science writer at Los Alamos National Laboratory specializing in the communication of bioscience research. She has also worked as a freelance writer, and volunteers her time as a communications consultant for a science education non-profit. <br />
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Disclaimer: Elena E. Giorgi is a computational biologist in the Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She does not represent her employer’s views. LA-UR-16-22406.<br />
</i><br />
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[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Applied+and+environmental+microbiology&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F26276111&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Climate+change+and+physical+disturbance+manipulations+result+in+distinct+biological+soil+crust+communities.&rft.issn=0099-2240&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=81&rft.issue=21&rft.spage=7448&rft.epage=59&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Steven+B&rft.au=Kuske+CR&rft.au=Gallegos-Graves+LV&rft.au=Reed+SC&rft.au=Belnap+J&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CGenetics+%2C+Molecular+Biology">Steven B, Kuske CR, Gallegos-Graves LV, Reed SC, & Belnap J (2015). Climate change and physical disturbance manipulations result in distinct biological soil crust communities. <span style="font-style: italic;">Applied and environmental microbiology, 81</span> (21), 7448-59 PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26276111" rev="review">26276111</a></span><br />
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[2] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Frontiers+in+microbiology&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F26322030&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Soil+microbial+responses+to+nitrogen+addition+in+arid+ecosystems.&rft.issn=&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=6&rft.issue=&rft.spage=819&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Sinsabaugh+RL&rft.au=Belnap+J&rft.au=Rudgers+J&rft.au=Kuske+CR&rft.au=Martinez+N&rft.au=Sandquist+D&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CGenetics+%2C+Molecular+Biology">Sinsabaugh RL, Belnap J, Rudgers J, Kuske CR, Martinez N, & Sandquist D (2015). Soil microbial responses to nitrogen addition in arid ecosystems. <span style="font-style: italic;">Frontiers in microbiology, 6</span> PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26322030" rev="review">26322030</a></span><br />
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[3] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Frontiers+in+microbiology&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F26388845&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Soil+bacterial+and+fungal+community+responses+to+nitrogen+addition+across+soil+depth+and+microhabitat+in+an+arid+shrubland.&rft.issn=&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=6&rft.issue=&rft.spage=891&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Mueller+RC&rft.au=Belnap+J&rft.au=Kuske+CR&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMolecular+Biology%2C+Genetics">Mueller RC, Belnap J, & Kuske CR (2015). Soil bacterial and fungal community responses to nitrogen addition across soil depth and microhabitat in an arid shrubland. <span style="font-style: italic;">Frontiers in microbiology, 6</span> PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26388845" rev="review">26388845</a></span><br />
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<span style="float: left; padding: 5px;"><a href="http://www.researchblogging.org/"><img alt="ResearchBlogging.org" src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_white.png" style="border: 0;" /></a></span>EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-24944173765976559802016-04-08T06:56:00.000-07:002016-04-09T09:56:27.897-07:00The Antibacterial Resistance Threat: Are We Heading Toward a Post-Antibiotic Era?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyHrdRrT3skJWSRMO6yiMvwXxJhBgNe4YGglo1Eha9JjXbx1wjij9QBHHKA6zUK5sEsIdDE4PQZM481URS9vKlCsBCACLIBkZoeiLMhoy_V6dVY2XGGN2k767BGL1eWJiYoAyAtYNttP0/s1600/infographics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyHrdRrT3skJWSRMO6yiMvwXxJhBgNe4YGglo1Eha9JjXbx1wjij9QBHHKA6zUK5sEsIdDE4PQZM481URS9vKlCsBCACLIBkZoeiLMhoy_V6dVY2XGGN2k767BGL1eWJiYoAyAtYNttP0/s400/infographics.jpg" width="350" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: PEW Charitable Trusts</td></tr>
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The above graphic, from the <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/projects/antibiotic-resistance-project" target="blank">Antibiotic Resistance Project</a> by the <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en" target="blank">PEW charitable trusts</a>, summarizes how alarming the emergence of drug resistant bacterial strains has gotten over the past few decades. According to data from the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/" target="_blank">Center for Disease Control (CDC)</a>, <strong>every year 2 million Americans acquire drug-resistant infections [1]</strong>, in other words infections that do not respond to treatment with ordinary antibiotics. Not only do drug-resistant infections require much stronger drugs, but, when not deadly, they often leave patients with long-lasting complications.<br />
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One of the scariest threats is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbapenem-resistant_enterobacteriaceae" target="_blank">carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE)</a>, bacteria that are resistant to several kinds of antibiotics. In 2001, only North Carolina, out of all 50 states had reported one CRE infection. Last year, in 2015, 48 states reported CRE infections to the CDC. And while drug-resistant strains emerge rapidly, the discovery of antimicrobial substances has stalled: in the last decade, only 9 new antibiotics were approved, compared to 29 discovered in the 1980s and 23 in the 1990s. <strong>We are fighting a new war, and we are running out of weapons</strong>.<br />
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<strong>How does drug resistance emerge?</strong><br />
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Bacteria constitute an irreplaceable building block of our ecosystem: they are found in soil, water, air, and in every living organism. In humans, it's estimated that they outnumber our cells by 3:1, and numerous studies have shown that not only do they help us digest and produce enzymes that our body wouldn't otherwise be able to break down, but they can also influence gene expression and certain phenotypes (<a href="http://chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com/search/label/bacteria" target="_blank">see some of my past posts for more information</a>).<br />
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They live in symbiosis with us, yet some bacteria can be highly pathogenic. The overall mortality rate from infectious diseases in the US fell by 75% over the first 15 years following the discovery of antibiotics [3], and researchers estimate that antibiotics have increased our lifespan by 2 to 10 years [4] by enabling us to fight infections that would otherwise be deadly.<br />
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However, evolution has taught bacteria to fight back. <br />
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Bacteria develop drug resistance through the acquisition of genetic mutations that either modify the bacteria's binding sites (and therefore the drug can no longer enter the membrane), or reduce the accumulation of the drug inside the bacterium. The latter happens through proteins called "efflux pumps", so called because their function is to pump drugs and other potentially harmful chemicals out of the cell. Once these advantageous mutations appear in the population, they spread very quickly, not only because they are selected for, but also thanks to bacteria's ability to transfer genes: the drug-resistant genes form a circular DNA unit called plasmid, and the unit is passed on to nearby bacteria so that they, too, can become drug resistant. <br />
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These mechanisms are not new to bacteria, however, what's new is the increasing overuse of antibiotics and antimicrobial chemicals in our modern lifestyle. The antimicrobial agent called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triclosan" target="_blank">triclosan</a>, for example, can be found in all antibacterial soaps, toothpaste, mouthwash, detergents, and even toys and kitchen utensils. Because of its wide use in household and hygiene products, triclosan has been found in water, both natural streams and treated wastewater, as well as human samples of blood, urine, and breast milk. As though that alone wasn't enough to alert consumers, a study published on the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/" target="_blank">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> [5] claims that <b>triclosan, which can be absorbed through the skin, can impair the functioning of both skeletal and cardiac muscle</b>. The researchers confirmed these findings both in vitro and in animal models.<br />
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Resistance is also spread through the use of antibiotics in industrial farming. <strong>In the US alone, the daily consumption of antibiotics amounts to 51 tons, of which around 80% is used in livestock</strong>, a little under 20% is for human use, and the rest is split between crops, pets, and aquaculture [3]. A meta-analysis published last year in PNAS [6] found that between 2000 and 2010 the global use of antibiotic drugs increased by 36%, with 76% of the increase coming from developing countries. The researchers projected that worldwide antibiotic consumption would rise by 67% by 2030 due to population growth and the increase in consumer demand.<br />
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These frightening statistics prompted CDC director Tom Frieden to issue a warning: “If we are not careful, we will soon be in a post-antibiotic era.” <strong>An era when common infections are deadly again.</strong><br />
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"We need to be very careful in using antimicrobial agents for everything from hand washing to toothpaste," Harshini Mukundan, microbiologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, explains. "Increased selection of drug resistant organisms means that future generations will be helpless in fighting even the most common bacterial infections." <br />
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Mukundan and her colleagues have been working on biosurveillance and tracking the emergence of drug resistant strains in high disease burden populations where emerging antibiotic resistance is a huge concern. In collaboration with the Los Alamos National Laboratory metagenomics group, and Los Alamos scientists Ben McMahon and Norman Doggett, the team is working on developing new assays for faster diagnosis of drug resistant infections. Another approach to fight drug resistance is trying to understand how bacterial efflux pumps work at excreting the drug out of the bacterium. Gnana Gnanakaran, a computational biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and his team have developed mathematical models to describe the structure of these pumps [7] and find a way to deactivate them. <br />
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While this research is highly promising and exciting, we all need to step up and do our part before it's too late: the CDC published a <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/features/antibioticresistance/" target="blank">series of recommendations</a> for patients to follow at the doctor's office, and there are smart choices we can make at home, too. In a <a href="http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm378393.htm" target="blank">recent report</a>, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims that there is no evidence that antibacterial soaps do a better job at preventing infections than ordinary soap, and that in fact:<br />
<blockquote>
"New data suggest that the risks associated with long-term, daily use of antibacterial soaps may outweigh the benefits."</blockquote>
In its 2011 policy paper, the <a href="http://www.idsociety.org/Index.aspx" target="blank">Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)</a> recommended a substantial reduction in the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and feed efficiency in animal agriculture, and encouraged the FDA to complete and publish risk assessments of antibiotics currently approved for non-therapeutic use. <br />
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Just like any other precious resource, antibiotics (and antimicrobial drugs in general) need to be used with parsimony. <br />
<br />
<strong>Resources</strong>:<br />
[1] <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/" target="_blank">Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013</a> (CDC)<br />
<br />
[2] <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/projects/antibiotic-resistance-project" target="_blank">PEW Antibiotic Resistance Poject</a><br />
<br />
[3] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=JAMA&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F9892452&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Trends+in+infectious+disease+mortality+in+the+United+States+during+the+20th+century.&rft.issn=0098-7484&rft.date=1999&rft.volume=281&rft.issue=1&rft.spage=61&rft.epage=6&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Armstrong+GL&rft.au=Conn+LA&rft.au=Pinner+RW&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth">Armstrong GL, Conn LA, & Pinner RW (1999). Trends in infectious disease mortality in the United States during the 20th century. <span style="font-style: italic;">JAMA, 281</span> (1), 61-6 PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9892452" rev="review">9892452</a></span><br />
<br />
[4] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=New+England+Journal+of+Medicine&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1056%2FNEJMp1311479&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Preserving+Antibiotics%2C+Rationally&rft.issn=0028-4793&rft.date=2013&rft.volume=369&rft.issue=26&rft.spage=2474&rft.epage=2476&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nejm.org%2Fdoi%2Fabs%2F10.1056%2FNEJMp1311479&rft.au=Hollis%2C+A.&rft.au=Ahmed%2C+Z.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMolecular+Biology%2C+Evolutionary+Biology%2C+Genetics">Hollis, A., & Ahmed, Z. (2013). Preserving Antibiotics, Rationally <span style="font-style: italic;">New England Journal of Medicine, 369</span> (26), 2474-2476 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1311479" rev="review">10.1056/NEJMp1311479</a></span><br />
<br />
[5] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Proceedings+of+the+National+Academy+of+Sciences&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1211314109&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Triclosan+impairs+excitation-contraction+coupling+and+Ca2%2B+dynamics+in+striated+muscle&rft.issn=0027-8424&rft.date=2012&rft.volume=109&rft.issue=35&rft.spage=14158&rft.epage=14163&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcgi%2Fdoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1211314109&rft.au=Cherednichenko%2C+G.&rft.au=Zhang%2C+R.&rft.au=Bannister%2C+R.&rft.au=Timofeyev%2C+V.&rft.au=Li%2C+N.&rft.au=Fritsch%2C+E.&rft.au=Feng%2C+W.&rft.au=Barrientos%2C+G.&rft.au=Schebb%2C+N.&rft.au=Hammock%2C+B.&rft.au=Beam%2C+K.&rft.au=Chiamvimonvat%2C+N.&rft.au=Pessah%2C+I.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CComputational+Biology%2C+Immunology%2C+Microbiology+%2C+Molecular+Biology">Cherednichenko, G., Zhang, R., Bannister, R., Timofeyev, V., Li, N., Fritsch, E., Feng, W., Barrientos, G., Schebb, N., Hammock, B., Beam, K., Chiamvimonvat, N., & Pessah, I. (2012). Triclosan impairs excitation-contraction coupling and Ca2+ dynamics in striated muscle <span style="font-style: italic;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109</span> (35), 14158-14163 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211314109" rev="review">10.1073/pnas.1211314109</a></span><br />
<br />
[6] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Proceedings+of+the+National+Academy+of+Sciences&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1503141112&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Global+trends+in+antimicrobial+use+in+food+animals&rft.issn=0027-8424&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=112&rft.issue=18&rft.spage=5649&rft.epage=5654&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Flookup%2Fdoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1503141112&rft.au=Van+Boeckel%2C+T.&rft.au=Brower%2C+C.&rft.au=Gilbert%2C+M.&rft.au=Grenfell%2C+B.&rft.au=Levin%2C+S.&rft.au=Robinson%2C+T.&rft.au=Teillant%2C+A.&rft.au=Laxminarayan%2C+R.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CToxicology%2C+Genetics+%2C+Evolutionary+Biology%2C+Molecular+Biology">Van Boeckel, T., Brower, C., Gilbert, M., Grenfell, B., Levin, S., Robinson, T., Teillant, A., & Laxminarayan, R. (2015). Global trends in antimicrobial use in food animals <span style="font-style: italic;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112</span> (18), 5649-5654 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503141112" rev="review">10.1073/pnas.1503141112</a></span><br />
<br />
[7] <a href="http://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/1663/2016-march/resisting-bacterial-resistance.php" target="_blank">Resisting Bacterial Resistance</a>, by Rebecca McDonald, 1663 Magazine.<br />
<br />
<span style="float: left; padding: 5px;"><a href="http://www.researchblogging.org/"><img alt="ResearchBlogging.org" src="http://www.researchblogging.org/public/citation_icons/rb2_large_white.png" style="border: 0;" /></a></span>EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-57963199795829022432016-04-06T07:31:00.000-07:002016-04-06T07:31:30.808-07:00April IWSG roundup<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>This is a monthly event started by the awesome <a href="http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/" target="blank">Alex J. Cavanaugh</a> and organized by the <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/" target="blank">Insecure Writer's Support Group</a>. Click <a href="http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html" target="blank">here</a> to find out more about the group and sign up for the next event. You can also sign up for the <a href="http://insecurewriterssupportgroup.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b058c62fa7ffb4280355e8854&id=cc6abce571" target="_blank">newsletter</a>.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> I know many of you are busy doing the <a href="http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/" target="_blank">A-Z challenge</a> this month, so I'll keep it short.<br />
<br />
As you know, I'm working on two projects at the same time, which is something I never did before. This results in both projects being slower but I fear that if I miss the spontaneity of the moment and put wither one aside, when I'll get back to it later on the voice won't sound half as good. Or at least that's what I tell myself, haha. :-)<br />
<br />
I explain this process in a <a href="http://www.literaryoutlaws.com/2016/04/episode-6-e-e-giorgi/" target="_blank">podcast interview</a> with two good friends of mine, and awesome writers, <a href="http://www.jasonanspach.com/" target="_blank">Jason Anspach</a> and <a href="http://kevingsummers.com/blog/" target="_blank">Kevin G. Summers</a>. Kevin and Jason started the <a href="http://www.literaryoutlaws.com/" target="_blank">Literary Outlaws</a> podcast this year and they've already interviewed some pretty cool people. If you have time during your commute to work, I highly recommend you check them out. :-)<br />
<br />
That's all folks, hope all is well with your writing, hope you're not sneezing too much this spring but instead enjoying the outdoors and warmer temperatures. And if you are in the southern hemisphere, enjoy the beauty of fall.<br />
<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-12809413247582971852016-04-01T07:12:00.000-07:002016-04-09T09:56:27.893-07:00Allergies: Can Too Much Hygiene Actually Harm Us?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5aLf0O_jcATIYUo8P-dbX7zugkZ1Fcr3cpT_K0dsW4LQWDukfaafMrprXjnGg6WxkHjkbwyfLfA4h7FzOWGQNldS1JkCRFvNi4qM_H04r7dEpm0YcEe1jl85AcRdufkBrZ4cE_h7pCA/s1600/FEB_039-africansunset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5aLf0O_jcATIYUo8P-dbX7zugkZ1Fcr3cpT_K0dsW4LQWDukfaafMrprXjnGg6WxkHjkbwyfLfA4h7FzOWGQNldS1JkCRFvNi4qM_H04r7dEpm0YcEe1jl85AcRdufkBrZ4cE_h7pCA/s320/FEB_039-africansunset.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
It's that time of the year again. You step out of the house and your eyes itch, your nose starts running and your head feels like an empty balloon. Yes, it's allergy season again. Even the resilient ones, give them enough time and eventually they will develop some form of allergic reaction. <br />
<br />
But what are allergies and why do so many people suffer from them?<br />
<br />
<strong>Allergies are a glitch in our immune system.</strong> The immune system is built to recognize and destroy pathogens -- potential threats like viruses and harmful bacteria. Unlike pathogens, allergens are substances that, despite being harmless to the body, still trigger a response from the immune system. As soon as the allergen is detected, the immune system releases a class of antibodies called IgE. These antibodies signal the cells to release histamine, a neurotransmitter that triggers all the pesky symptoms typical of an allergic reaction: wheezing, watery eyes, running nose, coughing, and all the like. <br />
<br />
Spring is a particularly dreaded time of the year for allergy sufferers because of all the pollen released in the air. Global warming has impacted the duration and spread of pollen allergies: shorter winters and warmer temperatures translate into longer pollen seasons, which in turn increase the duration and severity of symptoms for allergy sufferers. In addition, they also increase the exposure and possible sensitization of people who don't suffer from allergies ... yet [1]. <br />
<br />
<strong>Are allergies on the rise?</strong> <br />
<br />
In his 2015 review [2], Thomas Platts-Mills, of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, looks at the prevalence over the past five decades of asthma, hay fever, and peanut allergy, and reports a progressive increase in pediatric asthma, as well as a "dramatic" increase in food allergies. Allergies are more prevalent in developed countries, and particularly in urban settings, suggesting that something in the industrialized lifestyle may have triggered the increase. However, given the many drastic changes introduced in these countries over the past century, it's hard to pin-point one specific cause. Several factors have been suggested as possible explanations: changes in hygiene, for example, together with a decrease in outdoor life, smaller families and no more exposure to farm animals, have significantly reduced our exposure to bacteria; the progressive use of antibiotics and antimicrobial products have also reduced such exposure; less outdoor time also means less physical activity, more exposure to indoor allergens, and an increase in body mass. <br />
<br />
First proposed in 1989 [3], the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis" target="blank">"hygiene hypothesis"</a> -- the theory that the rise in allergic reactions is caused by a decrease in childhood exposure to harmless bacteria -- has grown to encompass many other disorders, not just allergies. The theory originally spurred from the observation that children with a higher number of siblings had a lower risk of developing asthma, something that led researchers to think that this was due to a higher exposure to bacteria. <br />
<br />
The human microbiome is the set of all bacteria coexisting in our body. They are estimated to outnumber our cells by 3:1 and the vast majority of these organisms are not only harmless, they actually play an important role in our health. For example, by modulating the concentration of chemicals that are precursors of important neurotransmitters, they can affect our mood and mental health [4]. They can also influence our propensity to certain phenotypes such as leanness or obesity by affecting gene expression in our guts [5]. <br />
<br />
Scientists have used a mouse model to show that by transferring gut micriobiota from allergic mice to resistant mice they could actually transfer the food allergy to the latter [6], proving a correlation between the two. Tolerance to food is acquired during infancy thanks to the interaction between the immune system and the gut microbiota, and therefore, early development of the gut microbiome is believed to play a fundamental role in the predisposition to allergies and other diseases later in life. Indeed, in the industrialized countries that are experiencing an increase in allergies, scientists have observed a delayed gut colonization after birth, less biodiversity in the gut microbiome, and reduced turnover of gut bacterial strains in infants [6]. <br />
<br />
Three major factors could be responsible for this: (i) natural birth versus C-section (a C-section deprives the newborn of beneficial exposure to commensal bacteria residing in the birth canal); (ii) breast-feeding versus formula; (iii) early exposure to antibiotics. All three practices -- C-section, formula feeding, and the use of antibiotics and antimicrobial products -- have been increasingly used in developed countries, and all three affect the development of the gut microbiome of infants. While studies that have looked at possible associations between any one of them and the risk of allergies so far have not yielded conclusive results, the differences in microbiomes between healthy people and those with asthma and allergies are an indication that early exposure to bacteria may protect against these conditions [7].<br />
<br />
<strong>Is there such a thing as too much protection?</strong><br />
<br />
These observations don't mean that we should all stop washing our hands and start living filthy. They do, however, point to a trend in overuse of antimicrobial household products (soaps, laundry detergents, kitchen cleaners, etc.). These products should be used with care and only when truly needed. In most instances, natural substitutes like vinegar to clean surfaces are a better choice, as they keep your kitchen clean without killing microorganisms that are actually beneficial to our health. As much as we strive to protect our little ones, remember that childhood exposure to pathogens makes your child's immune system grow stronger and well trained to recognize bigger dangers. (On a side note, vaccines equally stimulate the immune system without the hassle of all the symptoms.) Finally, global measures like recycling gray water can benefit both the planet and our own health, as it saves gallons of drinking water from being used in landscaping and farming, while restoring important bacteria into the soil and back into our environment. <br />
<br />
<strong>References</strong><br />
<br />
[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Proceedings+of+the+National+Academy+of+Sciences&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1014107108&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Recent+warming+by+latitude+associated+with+increased+length+of+ragweed+pollen+season+in+central+North+America&rft.issn=0027-8424&rft.date=2011&rft.volume=108&rft.issue=10&rft.spage=4248&rft.epage=4251&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcgi%2Fdoi%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.1014107108&rft.au=Ziska%2C+L.&rft.au=Knowlton%2C+K.&rft.au=Rogers%2C+C.&rft.au=Dalan%2C+D.&rft.au=Tierney%2C+N.&rft.au=Elder%2C+M.&rft.au=Filley%2C+W.&rft.au=Shropshire%2C+J.&rft.au=Ford%2C+L.&rft.au=Hedberg%2C+C.&rft.au=Fleetwood%2C+P.&rft.au=Hovanky%2C+K.&rft.au=Kavanaugh%2C+T.&rft.au=Fulford%2C+G.&rft.au=Vrtis%2C+R.&rft.au=Patz%2C+J.&rft.au=Portnoy%2C+J.&rft.au=Coates%2C+F.&rft.au=Bielory%2C+L.&rft.au=Frenz%2C+D.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CGenetics+%2C+Immunology%2C+Immunology">Ziska, L., Knowlton, K., Rogers, C., Dalan, D., Tierney, N., Elder, M., Filley, W., Shropshire, J., Ford, L., Hedberg, C., Fleetwood, P., Hovanky, K., Kavanaugh, T., Fulford, G., Vrtis, R., Patz, J., Portnoy, J., Coates, F., Bielory, L., & Frenz, D. (2011). Recent warming by latitude associated with increased length of ragweed pollen season in central North America <span style="font-style: italic;">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108</span> (10), 4248-4251 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1014107108" rev="review">10.1073/pnas.1014107108</a></span><br />
<br />
[2] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Journal+of+Allergy+and+Clinical+Immunology&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1016%2Fj.jaci.2015.03.048&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=The+allergy+epidemics%3A+1870-2010&rft.issn=00916749&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=136&rft.issue=1&rft.spage=3&rft.epage=13&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0091674915005849&rft.au=Platts-Mills%2C+T.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CImmunology%2C+Immunology">Platts-Mills, T. (2015). The allergy epidemics: 1870-2010 <span style="font-style: italic;">Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 136</span> (1), 3-13 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2015.03.048" rev="review">10.1016/j.jaci.2015.03.048</a></span><br />
<br />
[3] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=BMJ+%28Clinical+research+ed.%29&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F2513902&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Hay+fever%2C+hygiene%2C+and+household+size.&rft.issn=0959-8138&rft.date=1989&rft.volume=299&rft.issue=6710&rft.spage=1259&rft.epage=60&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Strachan+DP&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CImmunology">Strachan DP (1989). Hay fever, hygiene, and household size. <span style="font-style: italic;">BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 299</span> (6710), 1259-60 PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2513902" rev="review">2513902</a></span><br />
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[5] Ridaura VK, Faith JJ, Rey FE, Cheng J, Duncan AE, Kau AL, Griffin NW, Lombard V, Henrissat B, Bain JR, Muehlbauer MJ, Ilkayeva O, Semenkovich CF, Funai K, Hayashi DK, Lyle BJ, Martini MC, Ursell LK, Clemente JC, Van Treuren W, Walters WA, Knight R, Newgard CB, Heath AC, & Gordon JI (2013). Gut microbiota from twins discordant for obesity modulate metabolism in mice. <span style="font-style: italic;">Science (New York, N.Y.), 341</span> (6150) PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24009397" rev="review">24009397</a><br />
<br />
[4] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Neuroscience&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1016%2Fj.neuroscience.2016.03.013&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=The+microbiota%E2%80%93gut%E2%80%93brain+axis+and+its+potential+therapeutic+role+in+autism+spectrum+disorder&rft.issn=03064522&rft.date=2016&rft.volume=&rft.issue=&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0306452216002360&rft.au=Li%2C+Q.&rft.au=Zhou%2C+J.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CNeuroscience">Li, Q., & Zhou, J. (2016). The microbiota–gut–brain axis and its potential therapeutic role in autism spectrum disorder <span style="font-style: italic;">Neuroscience</span> DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2016.03.013" rev="review">10.1016/j.neuroscience.2016.03.013</a></span><br />
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[6] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=International+Journal+of+Environmental+Research+and+Public+Health&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.3390%2Fijerph10127235&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=The+Potential+Link+between+Gut+Microbiota+and+IgE-Mediated+Food+Allergy+in+Early+Life&rft.issn=1660-4601&rft.date=2013&rft.volume=10&rft.issue=12&rft.spage=7235&rft.epage=7256&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F1660-4601%2F10%2F12%2F7235%2F&rft.au=Molloy%2C+J.&rft.au=Allen%2C+K.&rft.au=Collier%2C+F.&rft.au=Tang%2C+M.&rft.au=Ward%2C+A.&rft.au=Vuillermin%2C+P.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CImmunology">Molloy, J., Allen, K., Collier, F., Tang, M., Ward, A., & Vuillermin, P. (2013). The Potential Link between Gut Microbiota and IgE-Mediated Food Allergy in Early Life <span style="font-style: italic;">International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 10</span> (12), 7235-7256 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph10127235" rev="review">10.3390/ijerph10127235</a></span><br />
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[7] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Allergy%2C+Asthma+%26+Clinical+Immunology&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1186%2Fs13223-015-0102-0&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=The+human+microbiome%2C+asthma%2C+and+allergy&rft.issn=1710-1492&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=11&rft.issue=1&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aacijournal.com%2Fcontent%2F11%2F1%2F35&rft.au=Riiser%2C+A.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth">Riiser, A. (2015). The human microbiome, asthma, and allergy <span style="font-style: italic;">Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, 11</span> (1) DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13223-015-0102-0" rev="review">10.1186/s13223-015-0102-0</a></span><br />
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In today's heated political stage, where everyone has a soapbox thanks to outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all the personal blogs, I've tried my best not to share my political views publicly. And I've miserably failed. I use my own Facebook page and profile to talk about science, books and photography, but then I can't resist browsing other people's posts. Most of my friends are not as shy as me about making their political views heard and that's when I fall into the trap: I comment. And then someone replies. And I comment back. And on and on it goes until one of us drops out of the conversation because clearly we're not getting anywhere. <br />
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Science has taught me to be humble and rational. And yet I'm human, and every time I make a mistake in my line of work I feel something inside my brain stir and protest: "How's that possible? Surely they sent me the wrong data, or they didn't give me the correct information, or the world collapsed and my computer exploded, but there's no way I could've made that stupid mistake."<br />
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Apparently, I'm not unique. We all go through this kind of mental distress whenever we encounter an inconsistency between reality and our expectations, and between other people's opinions or choices and our own. It's called "<b>cognitive dissonance</b>." According to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance" target="blank">Wikipedia</a>, social psychologist Leon Festinger described four ways our brain deals with this:<br />
<blockquote>
In an example case where a person has adopted the attitude that they will no longer eat high fat food, but eats a high-fat doughnut, the four methods of reduction are:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>1. Change behavior or cognition ("I will not eat any more of this doughnut")</li>
<li>2. Justify behavior or cognition by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat every once in a while")</li>
<li>3. Justify behavior or cognition by adding new cognitions ("I'll spend 30 extra minutes at the gym to work this off")</li>
<li>4. Ignore or deny any information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not high in fat")</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<b>What determines what choice we make?</b><br />
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In my case, I end up going back to my computer program. I typically find the bug (which I unknowingly introduced as I was coding), correct it, and rerun the analyses. Admitting my mistake costs me emotional distress, in addition to that nagging doubt at the back of my head -- will my boss still like me even though I made a stupid mistake? -- but in the long run it would cost me a lot more not to correct the error and hand the wrong analyses to our collaborators. <br />
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So why can't we do the same when we are heatedly debating politics or religion? Why do some of us even resort to insults rather than admitting that our own logic is faulty? <br />
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One possible reason is that there are no consequences to being disrespectful or even offensive when debating on line. After all, even when we use our real name, we are still hiding behind a shield of impersonality when typing our thoughts on an electronic device. On the other hand, if I hand out the wrong results and my collaborators publish them, there will be huge consequences for me. And frankly, trial and error is part of the scientific process: we all make mistakes, we correct them, and we repeat the process over and over again until we have clean and sensible results. Only then we publish a paper. <br />
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But in a political or religious debate the consequences can be far more costly if we suddenly admit that we may have been wrong all along. Changing our mind affects our self-esteem and may lead to self-blame, possibly disrupting the relationships around us. That's why our brain has a tendency to choose the easier path, which often coincides with reinvigorating present beliefs rather than shifting to new ones. As Nyhan and Reifler notice in a 2010 paper [1], there's a difference between being uninformed and being misinformed, as the latter is much harder to correct. In the paper, the authors claim that "humans are goal-directed information processors who tend to evaluate information with a directional bias toward reinforcing their pre-existing views," and conclude: "Indeed, in several cases, we find that corrections actually strengthened misperceptions among the most strongly committed subjects." <br />
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This behavior of reinforcing one's beliefs the more the contrasting evidence is presented, is called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" target="blank">"confirmation bias"</a>. Patterson et al. [2] define this bias as the tendency to favor certain explanations that conform to our own beliefs and/or emotional response, and classify it as "cognitive" or "emotional" depending on whether it reflects the former or the latter. It's a very familiar bias, as we've all seen it everywhere around us, whether it was to defend our favorite presidential candidate or to debate climate change. A little harder is to pin it down when we are engaging in this behavior ourselves -- but rest assured, we all do it at some point, although each one of us to different extents. <br />
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"Because of this mechanism," explains <a href="http://robinscohenphd.com/" target="blank">Robin S. Cohen</a>, a Los Angeles based psychoanalyst, "not only are we biased to favor perceptions that are in line with our beliefs, but we are also very likely to organize our world in order to only experience things that conform to our own ideas. This makes it less likely to be confronted with alternative opinions. Our own beliefs are so thoroughly reinforced through this process that new perceptions gain very little traction." <br />
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Interestingly, as Leonid Perlovsky describes in a 2013 review [3], experiments have shown that music helps abate the stressful consequences of cognitive dissonance. So, maybe I could try playing a little music in the background next time I'm trying to convince a Trump supporter to find a better presidential candidate. What do you think? Mozart or Metallica?<br />
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[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Political+Behavior&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1007%2Fs11109-010-9112-2&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=When+Corrections+Fail%3A+The+Persistence+of+Political+Misperceptions&rft.issn=0190-9320&rft.date=2010&rft.volume=32&rft.issue=2&rft.spage=303&rft.epage=330&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2F10.1007%2Fs11109-010-9112-2&rft.au=Nyhan%2C+B.&rft.au=Reifler%2C+J.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CNeuroscience%2CBehavioral+Neuroscience%2C+Cognitive+Neuroscience">Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions <span style="font-style: italic;">Political Behavior, 32</span> (2), 303-330 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2" rev="review">10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2</a></span><br />
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[2] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Frontiers+in+Human+Neuroscience&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.3389%2Ffnhum.2015.00559&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Motivated+explanation&rft.issn=1662-5161&rft.date=2015&rft.volume=9&rft.issue=&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fjournal.frontiersin.org%2FArticle%2F10.3389%2Ffnhum.2015.00559%2Fabstract&rft.au=Patterson%2C+R.&rft.au=Operskalski%2C+J.&rft.au=Barbey%2C+A.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CNeuroscience%2CBehavioral+Neuroscience%2C+Cognitive+Neuroscience">Patterson, R., Operskalski, J., & Barbey, A. (2015). Motivated explanation <span style="font-style: italic;">Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9</span> DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00559" rev="review">10.3389/fnhum.2015.00559</a></span><br />
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[3] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Frontiers+in+Psychology&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2013.00179&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=A+challenge+to+human+evolution%E2%80%94cognitive+dissonance&rft.issn=1664-1078&rft.date=2013&rft.volume=4&rft.issue=&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=http%3A%2F%2Fjournal.frontiersin.org%2Farticle%2F10.3389%2Ffpsyg.2013.00179%2Fabstract&rft.au=Perlovsky%2C+L.&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CNeuroscience%2CBehavioral+Neuroscience%2C+Cognitive+Neuroscience">Perlovsky, L. (2013). A challenge to human evolution—cognitive dissonance <span style="font-style: italic;">Frontiers in Psychology, 4</span> DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179" rev="review">10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179</a></span><br />
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<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7447544468792389936.post-42406214296495353502016-03-16T06:59:00.000-07:002016-03-16T07:03:18.458-07:00An open letter to all science lovers who want to defend science ... please don't. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last week I had an animated discussion on Facebook over an <a href="http://chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com/2015/02/yes-autism-is-on-rise-read-this-before.html" target="blank">older post</a> in which I describe some literature I dug out on possible (underline “possible”!) correlations with autism. True, my post is highly incomplete, but it was meant as a discussion starter to point at things that scientists have been looking at in an attempt to unravel what feels like a rise in autism. Is autism the new childhood plague of our modern society or has it always been around and we just became more aware of it? And if the rise is real, what caused it? <br />
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To me the most intriguing bit is that if you type 'autism gut microbiota' into the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed" target="blank">PubMed</a> search field (for those not familiar with PubMed, it's a repository for medical literature), you find an incredible number of studies and reviews: apparently there is an association between autism and disruptions of the gut microbiota, but whether the two are truly correlated or the correlation is spurious is still unclear. <br />
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Before I go on analyzing the literature I found on this topic, let me open a parenthesis on the Facebook discussion because it's something I deeply care about. You might think that the animated discussion I got into was with anti-vaxxers who believe that vaccines cause autism. Instead, my post was criticized by pro-vaccine people who, with the same unflinching certainty typical of the anti-vaxxers, believe that the rise in autism is fiction invented by anti-vaxxers, that autism has always been around, and that any difference between gut microbiota of autistic children and non-autistic children has been disproved. "By whom?" I asked. By this <a href="http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-02-specific-gastrointestinal-abnormalities-children-autism.html" target="blank">one report</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
"Children with autism have no unique pattern of abnormal results on endoscopy or other tests for gastrointestinal (GI) disorders, compared to non-autistic children with GI symptoms, reports a study in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition."</blockquote>
Notice that this opening line is a bit misleading because <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=26913756" target="blank">here is the actual paper [1]</a> whose conclusion, quoting from the abstract, are a bit more cautiously stated:<br />
<blockquote>
"This study supports the observation that children with autism who have symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders have objective findings similar to children without autism. Neither non-invasive testing nor endoscopic findings identify gastrointestinal pathology specific to autism, but may be of benefit in identifying children with autism who have atypical symptoms."</blockquote>
Notice also the difference from the abstract and the title of the report. You can tell which one was written by a scientist, right? Because when you do a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=autism+gut+microbiome" target="blank">search on PubMed</a> using keywords autism and gut microbiota you find a long list of references and decades of research. So to me what this says is that the question is still open and we need to understand the issues better. It takes way more than one paper to disprove hypothesis-raising questions spurred from decades of research. <br />
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Now here's the mother of all problems: <b>the Internet has made everyone (EVERYONE!) an expert. </b>Today you no longer need a medical degree to speak authoritatively about vaccines, disease, and health. This has generated movements like the anti-vaxxers, but, even more unfortunate is the rise of groups that reply to the anti-vaxxers without a scientific mind-set: <b>these people are doing even more damage to the community than the anti-vaxxers themselves.</b> I found myself in a conversation that had the same one-ended arguments used by anti-vaxxers except these were people who are actually in favor of vaccines: for every paper on autism and gut microbiota I brought up they would dismiss it with another one that said the opposite, demonstrating no understanding of the difference between raising hypotheses and making a claim.<br />
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As a scientist, I can tell you that this behavior is the very opposite of scientific thinking. <b>All the people who are in favor of science but DO NOT adopt a scientific attitude when counter-arguing non-scientific claims are hurting the scientific community.</b> It's happening for vaccines, for evolution, and for global warming. For example, people who support intelligent design are mistaken about evolution because they don't understand the meaning of the word "theory" and they don't understand how scientific thinking works. <b>We need to educate people on scientific thinking, not give bad examples of undebatable and absolute notions</b>.<br />
<br />
So, PLEASE, all science fans, I beg of you: support us by giving us a cheer, by always citing original papers, and by keeping an open mind because that's what a real scientist would do. We are raising hypotheses, not discussing the meaning of Bible verses. And if you know you can't do any of the above, then the best support you can give us is to shut up. Let real science speak for itself. <br />
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I'm fully aware that I'm preaching to the choir so I'll stop now and resume my discussion on autism and gut microbiota. As an additional side note, let me emphasize how difficult it is to discuss a topic like autism because of its extreme complexity: it's a relatively new diagnosis (first described in the early twentieth century), and even though no exact etiology has been found of date, the genetic studies conducted so far have implicated as many as 400 genes such that a malfunction in any of these genes could possibly result in autism [2]. <br />
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Let's start from the facts: our body hosts more microbial cells than human cells, with the vast majority residing in the gut. These organisms, which we collectively call the "human microbiota" (and “gut microbiota” when referring to the ones residing in the gut) interact with our cells in symbiosis and in fact, some experiments have shown that they can affect our health and even gene expression (see <a href="https://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Chttp://chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com/2014/04/forget-obesity-gene-its-obesity.html%E2%80%9D" target="“blank”">this old post</a> for a striking example of how genes expressed by gut bacteria can affect whether we are fat or lean). All this has been known for a long time, but it's only recently that, thanks to the advent of new DNA sequencing techniques that scientists have been able to look deeper into the composition and classification of the human microbiota. Metagenomic studies have found over 3 million distinct microbial genes (collectively called the "microbiome") in human stools, which is astonishing if you think that the human genome, in comparison, contains about 20-30 thousand genes. The gut microbiome is rich in enzymes without which our body would be unable to digest important nutrients. In fact, it's estimated that roughly 10% of our dietary energy intake comes from byproducts of fermentation from the gut bacteria. <br />
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That's all fine and dandy, but what does this have to do with behavior and brain health? A lot, actually, to the point that scientists coined the phrase <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut%E2%80%93brain_axis" target="blank">"gut-brain axis"</a> to denote the deep interaction between the nervous system and the gut microbiota. A 2011 PNAS study [3] used a mouse model to demonstrate how the gut microbiota affects mammalian brain development and behavior. This can happen in a number of ways, but one interesting hypothesis is that a healthy gut microbiome can help modulate the concentration of chemicals that are important for brain development as well as important nutrients that are precursors of neurotransmitters like serotonin. <br />
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Several studies done on different populations of children affected by autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have reported some form of gastro-intestinal (GI) dysfunction (such as food intolerances, abdominal pain, diarrhea and flatulence), with proportions ranging from 20-60% of the study population [4]. It's true that ASD children are often very picky eaters with drastic dietary habits, which would of course cause the GI issues. However, given the previously mentioned evidence that the gut microbiota shapes brain development since early infancy, the question of which is the cause and which is the effect at this point is legitimate. In other words, what came first, the chicken or the egg? <br />
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Studies have pointed at alterations of the gut microbiota in ASD children who experience gastro-intestinal issues, and some have reported that ASD children receiving antibiotics seemed to experience behavioral improvements. Drastic changes in diet (for example adopting a gluten-free and/or casein free diet) have shown behavioral improvements in some ASD studies, but not in all (meaning that some studies still didn't observe any improvement). Some papers report a higher risk of ASD in children who have not been breast-fed or who have been weaned after the first month of life. All of these instances would cause the gut microbiota to change, including breast feeding, which plays a fundamental role in establishing a healthy bacterial flora in infants. But why aren't any of these studies conclusive? And why are some conclusions the opposite of others? Such differences in results can be explained by differences in sample sizes (too few patients, for example, would cause a false negative), and also by the fact that many of these children have impaired communication skills, and therefore the symptoms, rather than being self-reported, are gathered from the observations of the parents, which can potentially introduce a bias. <br />
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Studies that have compared the microbial composition of stools in children affected by ASD with healthy children have had mixed results: the majority report some differences in the composition of the microbial populations, while a few found no significant differences. And despite many studies have looked into it, no ASD-specific gut disturbance has been found, meaning that whatever gut issues ASD children may experience, they are no different than the ones healthy children may experience as well. At the same time, there is some evidence that probiotics help relieve some of the gastro-intestinal issues ASD children experience and at the same time, improve some of their behavioral issues. <br />
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What conclusion can we draw from this? Well, first of all that there's no black and white but a lot of gray and anyone who will tell you it's either black or white does not understand how science works. Look at Lamarck's theory of the evolution of traits, first dismissed by Darwin and now (sort of) coming back in the form of epigenetics. Science is not a means to get a definitive and absolute truth, rather, it is our drive to keep asking questions in the search for working answers. [<i>On a side note, this is exactly why I do not like certain showmen out there who proclaim themselves scientists just because they promote science "truths"; real science educators should be promoting scientific thinking, instead</i>.] More than once in the history of science we've corrected and generalized theories. That doesn't mean that we were wrong, rather, it means that we've expanded our knowledge and acquired better investigative tools. <br />
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Unfortunately we don't have historic data on autism, since the term was first used in the early 1900s and the definition of the disorder has changed over time. This questions whether or not case prevalence has been truly rising over time, or, instead, the rise we're seeing is simply the effect of a more comprehensive diagnosis. Regardless of whether this is true or not, the fact that most cases are reported in industrialized countries raises an important speculation: these are countries that have seen the most drastic dietary changes over the past 100 years and also lifestyle changes in terms of hygiene and use of antibacterial products, both in household items, as well as in livestock farming (and the use of antibiotics in livestock farming has indeed been increasing over the past few decades). There is no denying that dietary changes and increased use in antimicrobial products will affect the bacteria coexisting in our environment. Are these changes significant? Can they be play a role in the rise in autism prevalence? Can they play a role in the etiology of other disease whose prevalence appears to be on the rise, such as asthma, food<a href="http://chimerasthebooks.blogspot.com/2012/05/bacteria-biodiversity-and-allergies.html" target="blank"> allergies</a>, and autoimmune disorders? <br />
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I do believe that these are legitimate questions that call for a deeper understanding of how our body interacts with the environment, both outside and inside. Throughout time, evolution has provided us with ways to adapt, but such adaptations are slow. Instead, over the past 100 years we've introduced drastic changes both in the environment as well as in our lifestyle in ways that are too fast for our genetic make-up to adapt. Anything concerning humans is complex, layered by multiple interactions between genetics, environment, and behavior. That’s why we need to keep looking and, most importantly, that’s why we need to always keep an open mind on things. Anyone who claims to know the absolute truth has misunderstood what science is about. Fighting bogus facts like the ones brought forth by the anti-vaxxers with analogous “absolute truths” will only reinforce the globally spread misunderstanding of what science is and what function it covers in our path toward understanding the world. The day we stop asking questions because we’ve found all the answers is the day we’ve stopped growing.<br />
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[1] <span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.jtitle=Journal+of+pediatric+gastroenterology+and+nutrition&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F26913756&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fresearchblogging.org&rft.atitle=Evaluation+of+Intestinal+Function+in+Children+with+Autism+and+Gastrointestinal+Symptoms.&rft.issn=0277-2116&rft.date=2016&rft.volume=&rft.issue=&rft.spage=&rft.epage=&rft.artnum=&rft.au=Kushak+RI&rft.au=Buie+TM&rft.au=Murray+KF&rft.au=Newburg+DS&rft.au=Chen+C&rft.au=Nestoridi+E&rft.au=Winter+HS&rfe_dat=bpr3.included=1;bpr3.tags=Biology%2CMedicine%2CHealth%2CImmunology%2C+Immunology%2C+Metabolism%2C+Genetics">Kushak RI, Buie TM, Murray KF, Newburg DS, Chen C, Nestoridi E, & Winter HS (2016). Evaluation of Intestinal Function in Children with Autism and Gastrointestinal Symptoms. <span style="font-style: italic;">Journal of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition</span> PMID: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26913756" rev="review">26913756</a></span><br />
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<br />EEGiorgihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11477791781485536775noreply@blogger.com13