StemCell Therapy

Atrium Innovations, a Nestl Health Science company, to leverage clinician-designed, algorithm-driven platform with healthcare providers

SUDBURY, Mass., Jan. 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Atrium Innovations, a globally-recognized leader in the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of innovative, science-based nutritional health products, takes the next step in the company's mission to expand into personalized nutrition with the acquisition of San Francisco-based LivingMatrix. LivingMatrix, a technology-based, data and algorithm-driven personalized functional medicine platform, was designed by clinicians to help practitioners effectively evaluate and engage patients, create personalized, actionable care plans and track patient health outcomes.

"This exciting acquisition is reflective of the current mission and direction for Atrium Innovations, with support from Nestl Health Science, to expand our role in personalization within the medical professional and consumer spaces. The addition of LivingMatrix will allow us to take the next steps in leading the future of personalized health management," says Kyle Bliffert, President of Atrium Innovations. "Our goal is to further scale our personalization platform through integrating LivingMatrix with our existing PureGenomics platform and future healthcare provider patient management systems providing the most comprehensive solution in the industry."

"The addition of LivingMatrix to the Atrium Innovations growing personalized medicine portfolio will further elevate the way functional medicine practitioners and patients in our longstanding network view and use healthcare," adds Joy Devins, Chief Strategic Leader of Atrium Innovations.

"The launch of the LivingMatrix platform has been a critical turning point for personalized and functional medicine and now, with the support of the Atrium Innovations and Nestl Health Science family, we look forward to breaking even more barriers," says Priya Kamani, Founder and CEO of LivingMatrix. "This partnership brings opportunities to scale the business and accelerate our ability to drive and support additional research studies to expand the evidence base for effectively addressing chronic conditions."

LivingMatrix is the latest acquisition for Nestl Health Science as part of the company's mission to lead the personalized nutrition sector into its next evolution. Their recent acquisition of Persona, a science-based proprietary technology which considers specific factors in a consumer's lifestyle, history and individual needs to develop a personalized vitamin program, was announced in August 2019. Persona's individualized assessments meet consumers' desires to find the right nutritional supplements for their unique needs. These personalized vitamin and supplement services are available to consumers through http://www.personanutrition.com. These strategic acquisitions will leverage Atrium Innovations' nearly 30-year industry expertise, bringing valuable insight from the company's network of medical professionals as well as professional brand development knowledge to the partnership.

"Through combining the strength of Persona's proprietary algorithm, the LivingMatrix data-driven technology and Atrium Innovation's leadership in the industry, we are creating an exciting future for personalized nutrition for professionals and consumers alike," says Bliffert.

For more information about Atrium Innovations, visit http://www.atrium-innovations.com.

About Nestl Health Science (NHSc)Nestl Health Science (NHSc), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nestl, is a globally recognized leader in the field of nutritional science. NHSc is committed to empowering healthier lives through nutrition for consumers, patients and their healthcare partners. The company offers an extensive consumer health portfolio of industry-leading medical nutrition, consumer and VMS brands that are science-based solutions covering all facets of health from prevention, to maintenance, all the way through to treatment. NHSc is redefining the approach to their management of health in several key areas such as pediatric health, allergy, acute care, oncology, metabolic health, healthy aging, gastrointestinal health, and inborn errors of metabolism. Headquartered in Switzerland, NHSc employs over 5,000 people around the world, who are committed to making a difference in people's lives, for a healthier today and tomorrow. For more information, visit https://www.nestlehealthscience.com.

About Atrium Innovations Atrium Innovations is a recognized innovative leader in the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of science-based nutritional and supplement health products. The company's mission is to be a global leader in vitamins, minerals and supplements, offering free form science based nutritional solutions through healthcare professionals. Its brands and business model are complementary with Nestl Health Science, its parent company, offering science-based nutritional solutions for consumers, patients, doctors, nurses and other partners in healthcare. Atrium Innovations Professional brands include Pure Encapsulations, Douglas Laboratories, Genestra BrandsTM, KLEAN Athlete, PharmaxTM, and Wobenzym.

About LivingMatrixLivingMatrix is the leading cloud-based, clinician-designed, outcomes-focused personalized medicine platform, helping over 600 practices in 22 countries engage in high-quality, personalized, therapeutic partnerships to address chronic conditions at scale effectively. LivingMatrix has partnered with the Institute for Functional Medicine and helps practitioners deliver a unique engagement process utilizing the Timeline and Matrix tools, and validated, patient-reported outcomes measures that provide a comprehensive assessment of a patient's health and objective tracking of patient progress. The result is a faster time to life-changing outcomes for the patient and an increase in referrals and growth for the practice. Learn more at https://livingmatrix.com

About Persona Persona combines therapeutic levels of nutritional support and a uniquely personalized vitamin program to deliver customized nutrition to subscriber's doorsteps. Based on science and using the highest-quality bioavailable ingredients, Persona's online assessment is built from its proprietary algorithm, which factors individual needs, lifestyle and prescription medications to deliver a recommendation as unique as the patient providing 5 trillion different recommendations. https://www.personanutrition.com Instagram:@personanutrition

Media Contact:Ashley HughesRLA Collective, a Ruder Finn Company(914) 241-0086, ext. 1014Ashley.Hughes@RLACollective.com

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Atrium Innovations to Further Scale the Future of Personalized Nutrition with the Acquisition of LivingMatrix - BioSpace

This weeks Cardio Round-up features a look back at what you may have missed during the holidays, as well as some of the big 2019 cardiology stories.

The past year saw some big stories like the Apple Heart study, presented at ACC.19, which essentially validated the ability of a wearable device (an Apple iWatch) equipped with a tachogram-tracking algorithm was able to detect pulse irregularities associated with atrial fibrillation. Icosapent ethyl also featured prominently, gaining an FDA approval for the reduction of cardiovascular disease risk as an add-on to statin therapy in high-risk patients with hypertriglyceridemia. Dapagliflozin (highlighted in the DAPA-HF study) also was shown to be an effective treatment for heart failure in both diabetic and non-diabetic patients.

2019 In Cardiology: Apple Heart Study Lands; Icosapent Ethyl Gets FDA Nod for New Indication; Dapagliflozin For Nondiabetics; and More

A new observational study published inEuropacesuggests it is possible to monitor and predict individual progression ofatrial fibrillation (AFib) using pacemakers or defibrillators.We aimed to study the progression of AER in individual patients with implantable devices and AFib episodes, the paper authors wrote. The study results indicated that the slope of AAR changes during the progression of AFib showed patient-specific patterns correlating with the time-to-completion of AER (R2 = 0.85). This technology opens up enormous possibilities in personalized medicine for AFib patients because it allows us to determine the progression rate of the arrhythmia in each individual and to optimize the timing of medical intervention with current treatment options, one of the researchers said in a press release.

Personalized Medicine for AFib: How Electric Activity in the Heart Can Predict Individual Progression of Atrial Fibrillation

A research team, publishing the study in the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, worked on converting adipogenic mesenchymal stem cells, which reside within fat cells, into cardiac progenitor cells. The ensuing cardiac progenitor cells can be programmed to aid heartbeats as a sinoatrial node (SAN), which is part of the electrical cardiac conduction system.We are reprogramming the cardiac progenitor cell and guiding it to become a conducting cell of the heart to conduct electrical current, said study co-author Bradley McConnell, associate professor of pharmacology, in a press release. Results of this study show that the SHT5 combination of transcription factors can reprogram CPCs into Pacemaker-like cells.

The Next Generation of Biologic Pacemakers? New Discovery in Stem Cells from Fat Creates Another Alternative Treatment

Diabetes mellitus is an independent predictor for heart failure, according to the findings of a study published inMayo Clinic Proceedings. In this study, using the Rochester Epidemiology Project, researchers assessed the long-term impact ofdiabeteson the development of heart failure by including 116 study subjects with diabetes, who were matched 1:2 based on age, hypertension, sex, coronary artery disease and diastolic with 232 participants without diabetes. The results showed that that diabetes is an independent risk factor for the development of heart failure. Over the duration of 10 years, 21% of participants with diabetes developed heart failure, independent of other causes. The researchers observed that by comparison, only 12% of patients without diabetes developed heart failure. The key takeaway is that diabetes mellitus alone is an independent risk factor for the development of heart failure, wrote one of the authors.

Diabetes is an Independent Predictor for Heart Failure

A new study suggests that regularly getting a good nights sleep isnt just a helpful overall health recommendation but is also an essential way to keep risk for heart disease and stroke down. The paper, published in theEuropean Journal of Cardiology, included more than 300,000 participants initially free of cardiovascular disease (CVD) from UK Biobank. According to the results, there were 7,280 documented cases of incident CVD (4,667 coronary heart disease and 2,650 stroke) cases. Participants with a sleep score of 5 had a 35% reduced risk for CVD, a 34% reduced risk for coronary heart disease, and a 34% reduced risk for stroke when compared to participants with a score of 0-1.As with other findings from observational studies, our results indicate an association, not a causal relation, one of the authors said in a press release. However, these findings may motivate other investigations and, at least, suggest that it is essential to consider overall sleep behaviors when considering a persons risk of heart disease or stroke.

Getting Quality Sleep, and the Right Amount, Can Offset Genetic Susceptibility for Heart Disease and Stroke Risk

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Cardio Round-up: Look Back at 2019, The Importance of Sleep, and More - DocWire News

IOWA CITY Throughout his 29 years as an internal medicine doctor in Iowa City, Dr. Richard Larew felt the pressure building.

There were demands to see more patients, meaning he couldnt spend as much time with each patient as he wished.

I was trying to find a way to get back to the way we have done things in the past, Larew said. There was more time. There wasnt quite the same pressure to see so many people.

Larew left hospital practice earlier this year to go into private practice and open Larew Internal Medicine, at 2557 N. Dodge St. in Iowa City.

Hes using an alternative care model called concierge medicine that allows him more time with fewer patients for a fee.

In exchange for an annual retainer, Larew limits his patient count, allowing him time for extended visits and agreeing to be available to patients at any time for any medical concern.

Larew has about 200 patients on his retainer. Each patient pays about $1,800 a year for the service, or $150 a month.

Larew, who grew up in Iowa City, had worked for Mercy Iowa Citys Towncrest Internal Medicine for 29 years before opening his concierge practice in July.

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Larews patients are able to get same-day appointments for acute illnesses, such as influenza, and they have Larews cellphone number for questions they might have after hours.

The majority of Larews patients are those with multiple chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, who he sees every three months. He refers such patients to specialists and tracks their progress.

Thats not a model theyre accustomed to using, Larew said. They just come in when theyre sick. The idea that we would spend a good part of time (during the visit) talking about how they can improve things is a different way of thinking about it.

Through concierge agreements, Larew believes he is able to provide more comprehensive, proactive care to patients.

He also thinks the agreements give patients a chance to reconnect with their primary care physician.

Part of what has always made medicine and being a physician a great profession is that personal connection, he said.

Kathy McCue, 66, of Iowa City, signed up for Larews medical concierge service when it opened. Larew had been her doctor for at least 20 years, and she wanted to stay with him.

I dont have any big health concerns, but if something did come up, I would like him to be my point person to be able to talk through things, McCue said.

McCue described Larew as thorough, a good listener and someone who loves educating patients and answering their questions.

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I think thats why he transitioned to concierge medicine, she said. He loves that part in medicine, and I always said he would be a good professor in that way.

And, its nice to have as a patient.

Concierge medicine, sometimes known as membership medicine, was created in the late 1990s by two Seattle physicians who wanted to offer more personalized medicine.

Concierge Medicine Today, a trade publication, estimated 5,000 to 6,000 doctors were practicing concierge medicine in 2018, though no database tracks the numbers. The approach inspired a USA Network television series, Royal Pains.

The method comes in for criticism because its available only to those who can afford the monthly fee, on top of their regular health insurance premiums.

A 2016 study published by the Population Health Management journal found patients health care expenditures declined in the third year of participation in concierge medicine programs. Researchers suggested that happens because patients address untreated health concerns and are caught up with chronic disease management.

Not much other research exists on the concept.

No one knows how to measure whos getting healthier, but do I think that people are benefiting? Absolutely, Larew said.

I think were achieving what were hoping to, he said. I want people to have a great experience when they walk in the door, and I want to be able to provide people with that extra time.

Comments: (319) 368-8536; michaela.ramm@thegazette.com

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A divorced Toronto dad has just won a slim victory in his ongoing battle with his ex-wife over her refusal to vaccinate their two children.

The father, who can only be identified as A.P. under a court-ordered publication ban, was recently given the go-ahead by the court to have bona fide vaccination experts testify on his behalf in his appeal of a shocking 2018 family law arbitration decision that sided with anti-vaxxers who falsely claim vaccines do more harm than good.

Its great news, says the dad. The judge recognized that the arbitrator made his decision without experts on my side.

Arbitrator Herschel Fogelman accepted the evidence of Dr. Toni Bark, despite the Chicago-based medical doctor having been rejected as an expert vaccination witness in a recent case in the United States.

Choosing not to vaccinate is not illegal, negligent nor immoral. It is a personal choice, wrote Fogelman in his controversial decision. I am unable to find any risk to (the children) if they remain unvaccinated. Further, I am satisfied on the evidence the vaccines may pose additional risk to them.

Self-represented at the time, the dad tried to introduce his own expert report from Dr. Alana Rosenthal, a specialist in pediatric infectious diseases and consultant in infectious diseases at Sick Kids and North York General Hospital. She concluded that no scientific studies have shown vaccinesto be harmful.

But the arbitrator said Rosenthal would have had to testify in person and despite the father`s offer to contact her he refused to accept her evidence.

The dad not only lost his bid to have his kids vaccinated they are now 13 and nine but was ordered to pay $35,000 in the moms legal costs, which included the $11,000 she paid Bark.

After his story went public in the National Post, his Gofundme campaign raised more than $14,000 toward his hiring a legal team to launch an appeal. He was also overwhelmed with support from the health community with offers to testify on his behalf at no cost.

Last month, the Ontario Superior Court agreed the dad can introduce fresh evidence from three renowned experts when his appeal is heard in March.

The doctors credentials are lengthy and impressive and put Barks thin resume to shame. In addition to Rosenthal, he has Dr. Lawrence Loh, Peels associate medical officer of health who served as senior medical consultant in the vaccine safety section at the Public Health Agency of Canada; and Dr. Neal Sondheimer, staff physician in metabolic genetics at the Hospital for Sick Children and an associate professor of pediatrics in molecular genetics at UofT.

Justice Jasmine T. Akbarali, though, rejected the dads fresh evidence challenging Barks credentials or his bald allegation that Dr. Bark is a hired gun, takings tens of thousands of dollars to testify against the use ofvaccinations.

More worrying to the father was the judges decision to accept the new evidence from their childrens pediatrician: Her greatest and only concern at this point in time is for the psychological and emotional health of the children in view of the high-conflict divorce, and the media attention this case has attracted, Akbarali noted.

While the pediatrician recommends vaccinations to all her patients, she wrote that she believes the 13-year-old is mature enough to decide for himself and has expressed the wish not to be administered any vaccinations at the present time.

Is a doctor really recommending that a 13-year-old child should be able to decide if he wants to be vaccinated?

I was blown away, the father says.

I`m trying to be optimistic. But what may happen is that my oldest will be allowed to make his own decision. Thats the worst case where he is forced to choose between his moms side or his dads side. Its a lot of pressure for a 13-year-old.

And in the meantime? Both children contracted a bout of whooping cough they never had to suffer.

mmandel@postmedia.com

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MANDEL: Divorced Toronto dad pushes ahead in vaccination fight - Toronto Sun

ANI | Updated: Jan 04, 2020 17:51 IST

Washington D.C. [USA], Jan 4 (ANI): Fast food attracts people due to its easy accessibility and inexpensiveness, but these easily available food options are loaded with oil, grease and saturated fats, which affects the human health.A recent study has suggested that food items containing more grease and fat can put the communication between intestine and the rest of the human body to stop.A team of Duke researchers has discovered that a high-fat meal completely shuts down the communication for a few hours. After they observed using the fish to examine cells that normally tell the brain and the rest of the body what's going on inside the gut after a meal.The cells they were looking at are the enteroendocrine cells, which occur sparsely throughout the lining of the gut, but play a key role in signalling the body about the all-important alimentary canal. In addition to releasing hormones, the cells also have a recently-discovered direct connection to the nervous system and the brain.These cells produce at least 15 different hormones to send signals to the rest of the body about gut movement, feelings of fullness, digestion, nutrient absorption, insulin sensitivity, and energy storage."But they fall asleep on the job for a few hours after a high-fat meal, and we don't yet know if that's good or bad," said John Rawls, an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke School of Medicine.Since enteroendocrine cells are key player's indigestion, the feeling of being full and subsequent feeding behaviour, this silencing may be a mechanism that somehow causes people eating a high-fat diet to eat even more."This is a previously unappreciated part of the postprandial (after-meal) cycle," Rawls said."If this happens every time we eat an unhealthy, high-fat meal, it might cause a change in insulin signalling, which could, in turn, contribute to the development of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes."To understand the silencing better, the researchers tried to break the process down step by step in zebra-fish, reports the study published in 'eLife'.After they first sense a meal, the enteroendocrine cells trigger a calcium burst within seconds, initiating the signalling process.But after that initial signal, there's a delayed effect later in the after-meal period. It's during this later response that the silencing occurs, said Rawls, who also directs Duke's Microbiome Center.The silenced cells change shape and experience stress in their endoplasmic reticulum, a structure that assembles new proteins. It seems that these enteroendocrine cells, which are specialised to synthesise and secrete proteins like hormones and neurotransmitters, become overstimulated and exhausted for a while.The team tried the high-fat diet on a line of germ-free zebrafish raised in the absence of any microbes and found they didn't experience the same silencing effect. So they began looking for gut microbes that might be involved in the process.After screening through all the kinds of bacteria found in the gut, they saw that the silencing appeared to be the work of a single type of gut bacteria, called Acinetobacter. (ANI)

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IN the summer of 2019, a mother in Nashville, Tennessee in the United States, with a seemingly incurable genetic disorder finally found an end to her suffering by editing her genome.

Victoria Grays recovery from sickle cell disease, which had caused her painful seizures, came in a year of breakthroughs in one of the hottest areas of medical research gene therapy.

I have hoped for a cure since I was about 11, the 34-year-old said.

Since I received the new cells, I have been able to enjoy more time with my family without worrying about pain or an out-of-the-blue emergency.

Over several weeks, Grays blood was drawn so that doctors could get to the cause of her illness stem cells from her bone marrow that were making deformed red blood cells.

The stem cells were sent to a Scottish laboratory, where their DNA was modified using Crispr/Cas9 pronounced Crisper a new tool informally known as a molecular scissors.

The genetically-edited cells were transfused back into Grays veins and bone marrow. A month later, she was producing normal blood cells.

Medics warn that caution is necessary, but theoretically, she has been cured.

This is one patient. This is early results. We need to see how it works out in other patients, said her doctor, Haydar Frangoul, at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville.

But these results are really exciting.

In Germany, a 19-year-old woman was treated with a similar method for a different blood disease beta thalassemia.

She had previously needed 16 blood transfusions per year. Nine months later, she is completely free of that burden.

For decades, the DNA of living organisms such as corn and salmon has been modified. But Crispr, invented in 2012, made gene editing more widely accessible.

It is much simpler than preceding technology, cheaper and easy to use in small labs.

The technique has given new impetus to the perennial debate over the wisdom of humanity manipulating life itself.

Its all developing very quickly, said French geneticist Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of Crisprs inventors and the co-founder of Crispr Therapeutics, the biotech company conducting the clinical trials involving Gray and the German patient.

Gene cures

Crispr was the latest breakthrough in a year of great strides in gene therapy, a medical adventure that started three decades ago, when the first TV telethons were raising money for children with muscular dystrophy.

Scientists practising the technique insert a normal gene into cells containing a defective gene.

It does the work the original could not, such as making normal red blood cells in Grays case or making tumour-killing super white blood cells for a cancer patient.

Crispr goes even further: instead of adding a gene, the tool edits the genome itself.

After decades of research and clinical trials on a genetic fix to genetic disorders, 2019 saw a historic milestone: approval to bring to market the first gene therapies for a neuromuscular disease in the US and a blood disease in the European Union.

They join several other gene therapies bringing the total to eight approved in recent years to treat certain cancers and an inherited blindness.

Serge Braun, the scientific director of the French Muscular Dystrophy Association, sees 2019 as a turning point that will lead to a medical revolution.

Twenty-five, 30 years, thats the time it had to take, he said. It took a generation for gene therapy to become a reality. Now, its only going to go faster.

Just outside Washington, at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers are also celebrating a breakthrough period.

We have hit an inflection point, said US NIHs associate director for science policy Carrie Wolinetz.

These therapies are exorbitantly expensive, however, costing up to US$2 million (RM8.18 million) meaning patients face grueling negotiations with their insurance companies.

They also involve a complex regimen of procedures that are only available in wealthy countries.

Gray spent months in hospital getting blood drawn, undergoing chemotherapy, having edited stem cells reintroduced via transfusion and fighting a general infection.

You cannot do this in a community hospital close to home, said her doctor.

However, the number of approved gene therapies will increase to about 40 by 2022, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers.

They will mostly target cancers and diseases that affect muscles, the eyes and the nervous system.

In this Oct 10, 2018, photo, He speaks during an interview at his laboratory in Shenzhen, China. The scientist was recently sentenced to three years in prison for practicing medicine illegally and fined 3 million yuan (RM1.76 million). AP

Bioterrorism potential

Another problem with Crispr is that its relative simplicity has triggered the imaginations of rogue practitioners who dont necessarily share the medical ethics of Western medicine.

In 2018 in China, scientist He Jiankui triggered an international scandal and his excommunication from the scientific community when he used Crispr to create what he called the first gene-edited humans.

The biophysicist said he had altered the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) of human embryos that became twin girls Lulu and Nana.

His goal was to create a mutation that would prevent the girls from contracting HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), even though there was no specific reason to put them through the process.

That technology is not safe, said Kiran Musunuru, a genetics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, explaining that the Crispr scissors often cut next to the targeted gene, causing unexpected mutations.

Its very easy to do if you dont care about the consequences, he added.

Despite the ethical pitfalls, restraint seems mainly to have prevailed so far.

The community is keeping a close eye on Russia, where biologist Denis Rebrikov has said he wants to use Crispr to help deaf parents have children without the disability.

There is also the temptation to genetically edit entire animal species, e.g. malaria-causing mosquitoes in Burkina Faso or mice hosting ticks that carry Lyme disease in the US.

The researchers in charge of those projects are advancing carefully however, fully aware of the unpredictability of chain reactions on the ecosystem.

Charpentier doesnt believe in the more dystopian scenarios predicted for gene therapy, including American biohackers injecting themselves with Crispr technology bought online.

Not everyone is a biologist or scientist, she said.

And the possibility of military hijacking to create soldier-killing viruses or bacteria that would ravage enemies crops?

Charpentier thinks that technology generally tends to be used for the better.

Im a bacteriologist -- weve been talking about bioterrorism for years, she said. Nothing has ever happened. AFP Relaxnews

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Gene editing breakthroughs that cured genetic diseases in 2019 - The Star Online

Like many Americans, I was shocked that our president ran what amounts to a transnational mafia in bed with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs who benefit from Russian President Vladimir Putins war for totalitarian control of Ukraine against a free people who have struggled and suffered so much for their freedom.

We might be even more shocked if we had the transcript of Trumps call with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey and friend of Putin, which led to our betrayal of the Kurdish allies who did most of the hard ground fighting against ISIS for us. The ethnic cleansing of Kurds out of northern Syria is a crime against humanity and should have been included in the articles of impeachment.

But while we are focused on the vileness of Rudolph Guiliani and other mobsters, experts and pundits discussing these events completely ignore the massive, glaring questions of how to prevent such things from happening again. Even impeachment and conviction in the Senate, which will never happen, would not solve problems far bigger than Donald Trumps serious abuses of powers.

We need amendments to protect the professional civil service (especially in law enforcement and foreign affairs), to counter corruption in the federal government (e.g. by requiring tax-return disclosure), to clarify grounds for impeachment, and to limit pardon powers. It is staggering that even these problems so directly linked with current controversies never come up in mainstream coverage.

And this is only the beginning: We all really need to stop focusing solely on this impeachment, despite the cowardly way many Republicans are trying to defend Trump with conspiracy-spins drawn directly from Russian propaganda.

To solve the roots of this polarization that is making too many Americans on the political extremes prefer ideology to reality, we need constitutional change to end the dominance of two major parties with automatic runoffs, to rotate primaries between all states so Iowa and New Hampshire no longer go first every time, to prevent gerrymandering and dark money in our elections, to establish uniform national voting and count procedures, set Supreme Court terms and ban the filibuster in Congress. It is colossal collective folly that we focus only on the symptoms while ignoring the root problems that prevent fair elections and perpetuate endless gridlock in D.C.

Even before the Ukraine news broke, we were largely ignoring many other urgent issues that will have much profounder effects on our children and grandchildren. Climate change gets deserved attention, but there are several other dangers that, taken together, could harm human prospects even more than climate change, although they get virtually no attention in this country.

The regime in China, which now holds more than a million of its people in concentration camps in a genocidal effort to erase an entire minority culture, is creating a nightmare of totalitarian control a hundred times worse than anything Orwell ever imagined. At home, its facial-recognition cameras are everywhere and all its people will be increasingly monitored via data collection.

China also is pressuring many other countries in Asia and Africa to obey its commands, and the strong-arm tactics we have seen used against the NBA and Asian journalists are only the tip of the iceberg. It will not help our grandchildren much to be saved from climate change only to live as slaves under a global tyranny run from Beijing and Moscow.

Yet, almost no Americans understand that we are going to wake up in a couple years to discover that China has invaded Taiwan and that NATO will not do anything to stop it because we want the money from trade.

Similarly, because of the gridlock in D.C. caused by constitutional flaws, you may wake up one day a decade from now to discover that the American government is defaulting on a federal debt that maybe exceeds $50 trillion ($50,000 billion) in 15 years or less, sending the world into a new Great Depression which finally cements Chinas dominance in the aftermath.

That is, if loose nukes getting to terrorists or pandemic diseases originating in the worlds poorest nations or cybercrime viruses running rampant do not take us into economic armageddon first. Remember this as Democrats and Republicans promote the new brand of moronic isolationism rather than seeking new arrangements to share essential tasks effectively among our allies.

This staggering collective blindness is a result of the deepest flaw of all in our social system: In the 20th century, as television and radio appeared, we were content to allow mass media to be delivered on a for-profit basis. For a long time, editors and producers felt responsible to cover stories that people needed to hear because of their objective importance, whether they grabbed high ratings or not.

Today, that ethic is so completely gone that CNN, which I have watched since it was founded, covers almost no global news at all. In fact, for more than four years, it has covered almost nothing but American federal politics.

Fox also has focused almost solely on American federal politics, with a few other cherry-picked stories to appeal to its base like an occasional immigrant committing some crime or some stupid campus activists trying to no-platform a right-wing speaker. Their international coverage is limited to things that might seem to boost Trump, such as a happy Turkish general proclaiming the safe zone in northern Syria that is, a zone made safe from Kurds in the same way that the Trail of Tears made eastern states safe from the Cherokee. This propaganda machine heavily influences the nation now.

More broadly, internet medias focus entirely and solely on what is trending or popular with its group of viewers, which will include few events beyond our shores. Most Americans never see a major newspaper with fact-checked journalism; they finish high school without learning about current world affairs or even the basics of American civics, such as key numbers for parts of the federal budget or the history of main tax rates, the federal deficit, projections for Medicare, etc. let alone elementary critical thinking that would enable them to distinguish reliable sources from total crap.

Combined, these problems mean the death of democracy through completely manipulable voters. Both could be fixed by fairly simple constitutional reforms to improve our mass medias and education requirements.

The stupidity resulting from only-trendy media is so colossal today that even domestic issues that are massively in our face everywhere get only the most superficial analysis. Federal anti-monopoly laws have not been seriously updated in almost 100 years, and yet we wonder how Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Facebook can own more and more parts of supply chains, buy up all competitors and abuse power in service of profit.

When a small handful of corporations own most of the systems on which our lives totally depend, sell all our private information to insurance companies and marketers, and crush any dissenting opinion with their ability to manipulate what people view, it will be much harder to unwind this plutocracy. Yet it never even occurs to us to discuss the smallest countermeasures, like EU-style laws protecting data privacy.

Of course, this will not matter much if Google has unleashed a smart Artificial Intelligence system that does more damage than climate change. Or if genetic engineering to enhance human capacities has become so common among the richest 5 percent across the world that they have become a new species poised to control the rest more decisively than was possible in the past.

Our chance to control these threats with smart laws and global partnerships will be distant memories by then. But you did not know about this danger because not enough celebrities have tweeted about it!

We all need to refocus on the fundamental structural flaws that are disabling our political system from making effective laws and preventing too many Americans from learning the most basic things they need to be responsible citizens. We cannot fix the substantive problems without working political tools, and our tools are so broken that we neither diagnose most of the problems nor fix them.

What would we think of a mechanic who is so outraged by an expensive broken car headlight that he does not notice that the steering column is broken and that the tools he is taking to the headlight are rusted through? First things first: fix the political system and fix the education of citizens by fixing the Constitution.

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COMMENTARY: Obsessed with Trump, our blindness to urgent issues grows - New Jersey Hills

Law360 (January 2, 2020, 6:03 PM EST) -- Two New Jersey-based doctors accused of causing a New Yorkers blindness with a botched procedure have escaped the suit after an Empire State appeals court ruled Thursday that the patient failed to prove the doctors principal business operations were in New York.

A four-judge Appellate Division panel for the First Department unanimously reversed a trial judges ruling that Drs. Henry K. Tsai and Brian H. Chon must face a suit accusing the physicians and others of providing negligent proton radiation therapy to Barbara Robins, which caused her to go blind in both eyes. Robins was undergoing treatment for a noncancerous brain...

In the legal profession, information is the key to success. You have to know whats happening with clients, competitors, practice areas, and industries. Law360 provides the intelligence you need to remain an expert and beat the competition.

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NJ Docs Beat Suit Over NY Patients Blindness - Law360

By ANGELA OKETCHMore by this Author

Ladies, when you walk into that cosmetic store, do you request a new brush to test the make-up, or a new spreader for your lipstick or do you use what has already been used?

And do you share the same brush for your make-up or the same lipstick or lip gloss with your friends? How often do you clean the brushes you use? Do you check your product expiry date?

According to researchers, sharing of the products, not cleaning and using expired products, is dangerous and can cause either herpes or blindness.

According to findings published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology, the vast majority of in-use make-up products such as mascara, lip gloss, lipsticks and sponges are contaminated with potentially life-threatening superbugs because most of them are not cleaned and are used far beyond their expiry dates.

The new research, led by Dr Amreen Bashir and Prof Peter Lambert of Aston Universitys School of Life and Health Sciences, has shown that nine out of 10 in-use beauty products contain superbugs including E.coli and Staphylococci.

European Union guidance holds make-up brands to strict hygiene standards and states that E.coli, in particular, should not be found in any concentration in new cosmetic products. However, there is currently limited consumer protection around the risks of contaminating products while in use.

The study tested 467 make-up products, donated by people in the UK, for bacterial and fungal contamination and found that 90 per cent contained potentially deadly germs.

The make-up products examined (lipstick, lip gloss, eye liners, mascaras and beauty blenders) had between 100 and 1,000 individual bacteria, except for beauty blenders, which had an average of a million bacteria. As few as 100 cells of some bacteria can cause infection.

The products, when shared, could pose a significant health threat if used by a non-infected person.

According to Prof Lambert, both E.coli and Staphylococci were found in used eye-liner and mascara.

These bacteria can cause irritation and conjunctivitis (pink eye). Although the symptoms of conjunctivitis tend to be mildly itchy, watery eyes in extreme cases can lead to sight loss, he says.

And the germs causing conjunctivitis can spread to other parts of the body, which can trigger a more serious secondary infection.

The sponges used to apply skin foundation products were found to have the highest levels of potentially harmful bacteria, with the vast majority (93 per cent) not having ever been cleaned, despite more than two-thirds (64 per cent) being dropped on the floor at some point during use.

The researchers found these products (sponges) are particularly susceptible to contamination as they are often left damp after use, which creates an ideal breeding ground for harmful bacteria.

When the Sunday Nation sought the views of Kenyan women with regard to sharing, applying products in cosmetic stores and cleaning the sponges after use, most of them admitted that they always share and that some of the products take years before they are washed.

Could this be the reason I am struggling with acne that never goes away. I have never washed my sponge since I bought it last year.

I have been sharing make-up with my sister using the same sponge and lipsticks too. Both of us now have acne, says Tabitha Mulama.

For one Sylvia Atieno, whenever she wants to go out on a date and she is in town, she goes to any cosmetic shop for a makeover.

Unfortunately, they use brushes and lipsticks that they use on all customers. I have never thought that this could have an impact. From today I know, I better use my own products, she told the Sunday Nation team.

In a survey of cosmetic shops in the central business district, the Sunday Nation team noticed testers of lipsticks, powders, however, when one has to test the products they either buy their sponges to apply the powder or use what is provided, which has already been used by others.

There is no new spreader for the lipsticks. One uses an opened one without minding who might have used it before you.

The lipsticks and lip gloss in the sample study contained Staphylococci and various bacteria associated with faecal matter.

The bacteria could cause redness, swelling and inflammation of the lips, which can be treated with antibiotics or antibacterial creams.

If the germs spread to the blood or deeper tissues of the body, the infection can become life-threatening, he says.

Make-up brushes also have the potential to act as suitable homes for bacteria.

Often the brushes are dampened to help the application of eye shadows or foundation.

However, this environment has the potential to promote rapid bacterial growth.

The study revealed most beauty products come with preservatives to stop bacteria from growing, but they have a finite shelf life.

All cosmetics have expiry dates, which are calculated based on the length of time the preservatives in the product are able to control contamination.

However, the study shows people are using products beyond the expiry dates and allowing microbes to build up.

To avoid contamination, make sure you discard make-up that has passed the expiry period, dont apply make-up if you have an infection or broken skin, never share cosmetics with friends, and definitely avoid using make-up samples in stores, says Dr Bashir.

Recently, a Californian woman sued Sephora, a cosmetics company, claiming she contracted herpes from using one of the cosmetic stores lipstick samples.

Dr Bashir advised that to avoid germs from cosmetics, the sponges should be cleaned often with warm soapy water.

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Experts warn sharing of makeup products can lead to blindness - Daily Nation

Soldier Steve Baskis was driving an armored vehicle in Baghdad in 2008 when he was gravely injured.

Shrapnel from an explosion cut through his optic nerves, blinding him. But since the accident, Baskis, now of Montrose, has climbed some of the world's tallest mountains, kayaked the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, skydived and more.

"I was interested in becoming a special operation soldier. An unconventional soldier," he said. "And I think that's driven some of the things that I've pursued as a blind individual."

This month, Baskis plans to climb the tallest mountain in the Southern Hemisphere, Aconcagua in the Argentine Andes. It will be the 25th mountain he's climbed since losing his sight. He also runs a non-profit called Blind Endeavors to help other injured veterans stay active.

"I think you can reestablish, maybe, a new normal by exploring what's possible with the body that you have," he said.

Baskis talked to Colorado Matters about his athleticism, his foundation and other challenges veterans with disabilities face and learn from.

On mountain and rock climbing while blind:

"Usually I have a primary guy that leads in front of me. They could be just making noise with their footsteps, tapping things with trekking poles. I am hiking with trekking poles and feeling out the trail as I move, and they're telescopic. I'll ditch them if it gets real steep and scramble on my hands and knees.

Climbing is very tactile, and then occasionally I have a guide or someone behind me that'll just say, 'Steve, stay right. Hold that form.' Because he or she can see from behind."

On how traumatic events and disabilities can challenge people:

"When people go through a traumatic change, you then test yourself in different environments. It gives the person the ability to forge strength, mental fortitude strength, physical strength, resilience, courage, determination. And that all plays a huge role in your daily life, whether you're doing extreme things or mundane things.

I still am (paralyzed by fear) at times. It's interesting, staring into a dark world that's very still, stagnant. I think a lot of people that are blind don't move enough. And it might be because of blindness, it might be because of a lot of reasons, but I definitely have tried to rebel and fight against that feeling of being afraid to step out."

On how being blind and a veteran have taught him resilience:

"I think blindness has taught me that, to be okay with failure, or whatever people interpret as quitting, failure, or frustrations. There's a lot of failures in my life. I talk a lot about the positive. Everybody hears the positive, but absolutely, there's been struggles. I think the thing to remember is I look past that and I find a way to drive forward. And soldiers are taught that or experience that."

On the concept of "inspiration porn":

"That's an interesting term. There's so many phrases nowadays. If you're struggling in a place, and somehow you latch onto this idea of inspiration or motivation, it can be so beneficial for you. We're so influenced by the good and the bad in the world, and I'm still thinking about it to this day. How do people interpret and feel those things? And it's just dynamic, I think. It's a moment thing for everybody.

I try to lead by example, and I've never really tried to be inspiring. I've always wanted to live life and do great things, but I don't look at myself that way. A lot of these things are very challenging, and there are many struggles within climbing a mountain blind, or kayaking. A lot of bad days, a lot of negative feelings.

I think people focus on interesting things, like the feat, a physical feat, but it is important to remember that I am very proud of internal things that have allowed me to cope with the issue of being blind. And so, inspiration is something that is interpreted or felt by others, and I have no control over that."

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This Blind Veteran Not Only Climbs Mountains And Skydives, But Helps Other Injured Vets Accomplish Their Own Athletic Feats - Colorado Public Radio

Few people think much about web accessibility. Even fewer people understand it, and without understanding there wont be empathy or change. However, a string of high-profile class action lawsuits in 2019, like the one against Beyonces management company, brought the issue to light and I expect well see a lot more companies prioritizing web accessibility in 2020.

At the same time, the US and many European countries are more rigorously enforcing their by-laws applying to free content accessibility. Companies will no longer be able to afford to ignore this issue.

Its no surprise that visually impaired people are demanding better access. Populated with Instagram stories and online stores that display 360-degree, high-definition product images and video, the web has become a visual public space. That puts many people at an unnecessary disadvantage.

Its not only lawsuits driving demand for greater visual access, but the growing problem of poor vision. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 1.3 billion people have some visual impairment, such as low vision, color blindness, and (partial)blindness. Thats nearly 20 percent of the global population including your website visitors who struggle with accessibility.

Ill be the first to accept that the US is more lawsuit-happy than most. Maybe you live in another country, with a different legal culture and dont think you need to worry about accessibility. Thats the wrong mindset.

As a frontend developer, I do care about web accessibility; its my responsibility. I dont want visitors just to have access. I want them to have the best possible experience. Lets take a closer look now at some of the different types of visual impairments people have and how to address them on a site.

Light sensitivity is a very common issue, especially for people who sit in front of computer screens all day. Light-sensitive people can find it hard, painful, or even impossible to read and concentrate under bright lights, on bright screens, or on web pages where bright colors are combined.

This is why most developers like me switch to dark themes in their dev tools, IDE, or their OS (if it has one). Its also why popular apps like Twitter, Google, Facebook Messenger, and recently iOS, provide Dark Mode.

One difficulty is that theres no one standard for light sensitivity. It varies by person and setting, so its impossible to devise one configuration set that works for all light-sensitive people.

Offer Dark Mode or a Light Theme for your users and allow them to set the brightness, essentially letting them decide for themselves.

There are several approaches to achieve this, depending on your technology stack and browser support. A straightforward way is to combine a CSS variable and the CSS invert method: filter: invert().

By defining invert(1), the browser inverts all colors available in your apps to the exact opposite matching colors.

This filter effect also applies to all images within the app. You might want to add some code to make sure colors are reserved even in inverted mode (dark or light).

Warning: filter is still not supported in IE. If IE support is critical for your app, consider using other approach such as CSS-in-JS (styled components for Vue or for React).

Contrast sensitivity occurs where people struggle to read text that is placed over images and videos. This happens when white text is placed on a light background, black text is placed on a dark background, or text is placed on a visually busy background.

Unlike light sensitivity, contrast sensitivity issues are easy to identify. Popular browsers including Chrome and Firefox now include a contrast score check in their dev tools, which flag any page sections that arent visible enough. You shouldnt rely solely on these tools, however, because the automatic scores are not always 100 percent accurate.

To address contrast sensitivity fully, refer to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It states that text, or images of text, must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. Exceptions are large text (where its 3:1), invisible, and decorative text and logotypes, where the text is part of a brand name.

To summarize some of the main points:

To ensure your website passes the contrast test, check out this free Contrast Checker tool by WebAIM.

Color blindness (or color vision deficiency) makes it difficult (or impossible) for affected people to identify or distinguish between specific colors.

Imagine a colorblind person visits an online store to buy a red t-shirt and sees only green ones. How would this visitor know which ones to buy?

In some cases it will be impossible to adapt an image to appear correctly for someone with color vision deficiency. For these, the options are to either provide chat/live support or text prompts (or, ideally, both).

To provide text prompts, we add the name of the color as text to images using the alt attribute. So instead of saying that an image is a t-shirt, we would explicitly state that it is a red t-shirt. The more specific, the better. Yellow is somewhat helpful, but mustard yellow is much more descriptive.

This will involve some light coding, or you can use one of the image management tools on the market that help automate this process.

Another option is to provide a unique pattern to represent each different color on your webpage. The standard approaches are not straightforward either designers need to manually code something or use image editing software like Photoshop or Gimp to create an extra resource for each colorblind case.

The free version of my companys own software includes a transformation e_assist_colorblind effect to make this process easier. For example, you can add stripes to highlight the difference between hot (red) and cold (green) colors.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas for how to address the most common issues around visual accessibility. By focusing on this important issue, youll not just avoid litigation, but youll attract more site visitors, raise engagement, and potentially boost revenue as well.

Published January 3, 2020 08:00 UTC

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Visual accessibility will be a priority in 2020 heres how to adapt your site - The Next Web

(Photo : cdn.britannica.com)Improving the way to accessing technology is important for PWD and non-PWDS too. Creating interfaces that are customizable and adaptive for any kind of use will be a shock as to how well it adapts.

Everyone is surrounded by technology andaccessing technologyis important just like breathing. The speed of how much it developed is blinding, with several options for how to access it. This translates to convenience and assistive technology, enables those with disabilities still need help to use the internet.So, making access possible through more assistive technology should be done. If only to encourage more use, whether able or disabled.

In response to the needed of those, with a limitation for ready access to technology like the visual, hearing, and physical incapacity too. This list of adaptive access has made the internet more accessible than ever. There is one gap to breached, which is different cognitive functions that should be developed later on. In 2020, hopes are high to bridge this gap sooner than expected.

Blindness is not a hindrance for access if the interface is based onsound access that the blind personcan hear. It is a difference for those who do not have hearing, which makes it hard to translate sound instead. These problems of deafness and blindness should be studied and improve information access for these people.

It should not be neglected that even normal people are subject to having a hard time, interacting with interfaces for real too. Things were simple before just a dial or a button, that is it. Now complex digital is the in thing, some are plainly just as disabled from this. Not all are tech-savvy, and the majority would simply go for less complex. Technology is good, but if it alienates the users, there is something wrong.

Solving this conundrum can be done in two ways, and one is coming soon with another in development. Some technologies will benefit PWDS but are good only because the PWD needs the tech. But, anyone who can access the tech fine will find it hard to use it. It is a give and go for tech customized for PWDS and non-PWDS.

One of these assistive techs isMorphicthat is an OS extension that customizes a computer, to the specs of the unique user. For example, it fixes the appearance of the desktop to help the PWD or non-PWD navigate the screen. This is very convenient for everyone and makes thing automatic for the user too. Everything is so intuitive that it even falls back to the default on its own. Technology like this is very easy to use and simplifies access without complex actions,

For the long-term improvement for internet access, that would mean aa lot of innovation from tech companies producing smart devices. Instead of making their own versions (tech companies), it is better to have standard interface for normal users. Then, third parties will build the application from ground up to let PWDS use computers too.

One example of these user-adaptive apps that can be made to create customized interfaces for both. This is shocking to everyone as computers have the benefit of easier use. Not all tech producers will give away their tech so freely, which is another problem. So, this is a problem that needs solutions to make it feasible.

Getting the simplest way toaccessing technologyis a must, and expanding access will make great strides for any use. Nothing ever stays the same and more ways to access a computer, should be shocking for everyone concerned.

Related Article: The next decade will reshape how we think of technology accessibility

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Accessing Technology Is About to Change and It Will Be Shocking for Everyone - Science Times

Our politics, and the news cycle, dwell too much on crises and criticism.

Lets use New Years Eve as a moment to balance that, as we reflect on some good things that happened in 2019.

The largest hydroelectric project in the entire continent of Africa, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, will continue to completion.

In November, the U.S. invited representatives of Ethiopia and the two downstream users of water from the Blue Nile, Sudan and Egypt, to Washington, to reach an agreement on how quickly the reservoir behind the dam would be filled and how the electricity produced by the dam would be shared.

A deadline for an agreement was set for Jan. 15, with arbitration agreed to for any remaining differences. Diplomatic tensions had undermined progress since 2011, with some Egyptian politicians even threatening to bomb the dam during construction.

The resolution of this dispute will allow for the electrification of huge parts of Ethiopia, Sudan and even Egypt, that lagged behind the economic development of the rest of the region. This progress was made possible by U.S. diplomatic pressure on Egypt and new leadership in both Ethiopia and Sudan.

Life expectancy in the world continues to improve, adding another three months in 2019. This small, if steady progress, continues an astounding record of improvement since 1950, when average world life expectancy was 45 years. Today, it is 73 years.

The percentage of children surviving past their first year improved during 2019, exceeding 97%, worldwide, for the first time in human history.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota announced that Type 3 polio was eradicated from the world in October 2019. Type 2 was eradicated in 2015. Only one type of wild polio virus still remains in the world, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Along with the U.S. and other donor nations, researchers, and dedicated public health workers of many countries, the long-standing generosity and energetic devotion of Rotary International should be recognized in this tremendous achievement.

Another service organization, the Lions, deserve thanks for their persistence in the fight against blindness around the world. An international pharmaceutical company, Merck & Co., donates the medicine to treat river-blindness, an affliction that is one of the two largest causes of preventable loss of sight.

The Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter, has coordinated the delivery of these medications throughout Latin America and Africa. River-blindness is now effectively gone from Latin America. In August, world health authorities predicted Uganda would be free of this scourge imminently.

The magazine Business Insider recently reported on major achievements in space exploration during 2019.

Among the most remarkable this year are the first photograph of a black hole, the launching of a commercial spaceship to carry human passengers (SpaceX), the discovery of seismic activity on Mars, the departure of Voyager 2 from our solar system bound for inter-stellar space with much more sophisticated equipment than its predecessor Voyager 1 and the first landing on the far side of the moon. The latter event was achieved by China.

Focusing on the U.S., Americans returned to the workforce in a flood not observed since June 2013. Labor force participation is a key indicator of both future economic growth and of optimism about that growth.

As more Americans believe job opportunities will be permanent, they have started looking for jobs again, and, in great measure, finding them.

Real average earnings grew throughout 2019 in the U.S. economy. On both an hourly and a weekly basis, wages outpaced the cost of living, resulting in a growth in workers take-home pay every month this year. (That had not happened since 2016.)

The value of output per American worker rose in every quarter of last year, continuing an unbroken trend of growth since the third quarter of 2016.

It has been a wonderful year!

Tom Campbell teaches economics, law and political science at Chapman University. He is the interim chairman of a new political party, the Common Sense Party, which he is helping to form in California.

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Celebrating the good things that happened in 2019: Tom Campbell - The Whittier Daily News

Ice blocks, bound by rope and hanging from wooden beams, drip into ceramic bowls. With underwater microphones placed in the bowls, the trickling sound of the water dripping is amplified. It is a musicality of drops that you hear as you walk into the dimly lit, cool space at Sharjah Art Foundations Bait Obaid Al Shamsi. The notes resonate, full and expansive, in the restored creekside Emirati house complex; so much so that most of those who attended the opening of the second Sharjapan exhibition, Inter-Resonance: Inter-Organics Japanese Performance and Sound Art, last month, closed their eyes to be fully enveloped by the watery timbre.

The installation, In Curved Water, is one part of the show, organised by Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs until Saturday, February 15.

The exhibition focuses on bringing traditional Japanese practices and technology to the emirate. The water bowls installation is one of many in the historic Bait Al Shamsi venue, which also includes automated xylophones, magnet-driven bells, musical compasses and floor-strewn lightbulbs. Stand at the centre of the exhibition and youll hear the faint chimes, droplets and sizzles at random from each direction. Japanese artist Tomoko Sauvage spent 10 years developing her electro-aquatic instrument. Porcelain bowls, water drops, bubbles and hydrophonic feedback are its main components. Sauvage decided to develop the water bowls after attending an Anayampatti Ganesan concert in 2006. The musical virtuoso plays the Jalatharangam, the traditional Carnatic instrument made up of water-filled porcelain bowls.

Ive been experimenting with musical sounds since for ever, Sauvage, who has been based in France for the past 16 years, tells The National. I started working on the water bowls after seeing Ganesan perform. I went home and started hitting china bowls with chopsticks in my kitchen. The water bowls started taking form after I had the idea of using hydrophones.

Sauvages In Curved Water is a direct statement on the environment. The ice blocks are meant to allude to the glaciers melting as a result of climate change. Sauvage says that most people employ an out-of-sight, out-of-mind stance when it comes to environmental issues.

My musical experimentation is grounded in live-performance-based practices that investigate the improvisation and interaction with the environment, she says, adding that she hopes the installation will bridge the distance between the melting glaciers and the listener, making them feel as if they are bearing witness, in real time, to climate change. In this context, the meditative watery music becomes heavy with an ominously pressing message.

Though the water drops in Sauvages installation are randomly timed, the artist uses the electro-aquatic instrument in deliberately arranged live performances. Her 2007 album Musique Hydromantique exclusively features the instrument, and though it is comprised of only three tracks, it runs for more than 40 minutes.

Sharjapan is part of a four-year agreement between the Sharjah Art Foundation and curator Yuko Hasegawa. Last years exhibition, The Poetics of Space, focused on Japanese book design from the early 20th century to present day. This year, the focus is on performance art, sound-based installations and new technologies and traditional Japanese practices that explore the interactions between nature, technology and human life.

The exhibition comprises installations at Bait Obaid Al Shamsi and five performances that take place in venues across Sharjah. These feature a variety of art forms, including dance, music and literature. In addition to Sauvage, the participating artists are Eitetsu Hayashi, Yuko Mohri, Mirai Moriyama, Keiichiro Shibuya and Min Tanaka.

We wanted to bring a varied set of Japanese performances to this years exhibition, not just the well-known Kabuki theatre, says Hasegawa, who is also artistic director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. There are Sauvages water bowls, which allow people to visualise the looming threat of climate change; Eitetsu Hayashi, who will perform traditional Japanese taiko drumming in his pioneering style; and Min Tanaka, who will present an improvised dance piece that challenges the conventions of modern dance and questions the role of dance in contemporary society.

The dance pieces are inspired by the Japanese art of Butoh. Established after the Second World War, Butoh rebels directly against western styles of dance, with most of the moves carried out on the ground. It has an aggressive style to it, says Hasegawa. The movements are slow and unlike the western techniques of dance. The avant-garde dance aims to rebel against western influence.

The opening performance at this years Sharjapan was a movement piece by Moriyama. The Japanese actor, who began his dance training at five years old, brought a theatrical reading of Jose Saramagos Blindness to the Sharjah Institute of Theatrical Arts. The performance was called Consideration of the Invisible / Visible.

Directed to wear an earphone in one ear, members of the audience were seated on the stage, some two metres from Moriyama. The actor began his performance centre stage, reading the opening passage of the Nobel prize-winner Saramagos novel from an iPad. The story revolves around an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the chaos that follows.

With flickering lights, fragmented texts and movements, Moriyama invited audiences to take part in the plot. The performance seems to allude to modern social issues such as depression and loneliness. Uncomfortable at times and serene at others, Moriyamas performance was deeply contemplative. Though this performance has now elapsed, the schedule of events promises to be equally as exciting.

Sharjapan: Inter-Resonance: Inter-Organics Japanese Performance and Sound Art runs until Saturday, February 15. Shows take place in various locations across Sharjah

Updated: January 4, 2020 05:16 PM

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Sharjapan: bringing new technologies and Japanese practices to the Sharjah art scene - The National

JOCELYN MURPHY

jmurphy@nwadg.com

It was a big year for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. For a museum thats only 8 years old, every year might conceivably be a big year. But in spite of its youth, the Bentonville museum has already established itself as a trailblazer and continues to achieve impressive new heights with each passing trip around the sun.

In 2019, Northwest Arkansas behemoth arts presenter organized, mounted and traveled a momentous exhibition (Men of Steel, Women of Wonder); activated outdoor spaces in new ways with an internally curated sculpture exhibition and an innovative light and sound installation; explored its namesake in a first-of-its-kind exhibition (Crystals in Art: Ancient to Today); acquired dynamic new works; and is on track to have a record-breaking attendance year.

Its a lot happening, Executive Director & Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Rod Bigelow says with a chuckle and a touch of astonishment.

When we landed on the scene, we were labeled a disrupter, he goes on, noting the label was bestowed with both positive and negative implications. I think thats part of our DNA and our culture is that we want to continue to disrupt these discussions and have a bit of a different perspective in the field.

Early on in our life, there was a lot of criticism about who would come to see art in Arkansas, and a lot of discrediting the quality of the experience or where it was. Its good to look back on that now, he muses.

Access

This year, Crystal Bridges honed in on two points of its mission: welcoming all, and presenting a more inclusive narrative of the American experience.

Bilingual presentations in exhibitions were expanded and will continue to increase moving forward. More multi-sensory experiences for visitors with blindness or low vision were widened through a touchable art program. A new cart guide program offers guests a more hands-on way to interact with the work than the traditional walk-through museum experience. And this summer, during the museums outdoor sculpture exhibition focusing on color, Crystal Bridges was gifted 60 pairs of special color-enhancing glasses that were made available for checkout to guests who are colorblind.

The museums commitment to meeting visitors where theyre at so that everyone can experience the art in their own way has translated to almost 5 million visitors since its opening. Before the holidays, Crystal Bridges had already seen an estimated 662,000 visitors this year, surpassing the previous annual attendance record by nearly 30,000.

Outdoors

Outside the museums walls, the grounds at Crystal Bridges were host to myriad experiences the museum had never engaged in before.

We did some creative things this year, including the first campout in the forest, which was fun and exciting, especially for people who dont ever camp, Bigelow shares. And then we did a big Chalk Festival where we had 23 artists come and create a multi-day experience in our parking garage. If you havent seen chalk art being created moment-by-moment, its a fascinating experience. And although it was hot, it was terrific.

The North Forest was also host to two other exciting moments for Crystal Bridges. This summers Color Field was the museums first internally curated outdoor sculpture exhibition and was displayed in conversation with the temporary exhibition at the time, Natures Nation.

In the fall, Crystal Bridges new partnership with Montreal-based multimedia and entertainment studio Moment Factory resulted in the immersive, experiential installation North Forest Lights.

That is a very different kind of experience for us, and that was our intention, Bigelow says of the group of five artistic light and sound installations that are open at night through Feb. 16. What I love about being out in the forest is that every experience is different. And I think thats a poignant impact that weve created in that space and that will continue.

Acquisitions

One of the things that was really important for us this year was our continued growth in our collection, and acquiring objects that are more representative of America, reflects Bigelow.

In focusing on creating a more inclusive view of the American experience, Bigelow reveals curators were very intentional about acquiring works by women artists and artists of color. Two of the new works that have incited significant enthusiasm from viewers are Yayoi Kusamas Infinity Mirrored Room and Kehinde Wileys Portrait of Florentine Nobleman, both on display in the Contemporary Art Gallery.

These and other acquisitions for the Contemporary Gallery instigated the opportunity to re-imagine a portion of the space. Prior to the redesign, the gallerys flow was more chronological. Now, the experience in the immersive Infinity Room abstraction, repetition informs what guests will see in the rest of the gallery space. The section following Kusamas piece is full of newly acquired works by artists concentrating on figuration influenced by abstraction, assistant curator Alejo Benedetti revealed to Whats Up! earlier this year.

Among these contemporary artists of color and female artists pushing boundaries of representation are:

Jordan Casteel, Ourlando; Loie Hollowell, Mothers Milk (featured in 2018 exhibition The Beyond: Georgia OKeeffe and Contemporary Art); Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Dave Forsythe; Emma Amos, The Reader (featured in 2018s Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power).

Crystal Bridges also acquired 23 works by Los Angeles-based collector Gordon Bailey this year.

Added to the Early American Art Gallery, pioneering African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanners The Good Shepherd is another important 2019 addition.

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Crystal Bridges ups the wow factor in 2019 - The Free Weekly

CARLSBAD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE American and TASE: LCTX), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel cellular therapies for unmet medical needs, today announced additional patient data from its ongoing Phase I/IIa clinical study of OpRegen, the Companys retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) transplant therapy, for the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration (dry AMD), a leading cause of adult blindness in the developed world with no FDA-approved treatment options.

The first Cohort 4 patient treated using both a new subretinal delivery system and the Companys new thaw-and-inject (TAI) formulation of OpRegen has continued to demonstrate notable improvements in vision, having gained 25 readable letters (or 5 lines) 6 months following administration of OpRegen RPE cells, as assessed by the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Scale (ETDRS). This represents an improvement in visual acuity from a baseline of 20/250 to 20/100 in the treated eye. A second Cohort 4 patient has been similarly dosed, and though early, the patient has shown a small improvement in visual acuity in the treated eye at just 14 days following treatment. To date, improvements have become most evident approximately three to six months after treatment. Both patients had rapid healing at the surgical site with no unexpected complications or any serious adverse events.

We are increasingly optimistic about the data we are collecting in dry AMD, stated Brian M. Culley, CEO of Lineage. We have treated five patients in Cohort 4, those with less advanced disease, which more closely match our intended patient population. At the longest-available assessment point for each patient, all five have shown an increase in the number of letters they can read on an ETDRS eye chart. Importantly, these gains have been maintained for as long as 15 months, which is the longest time point for which we have collected data in the better vision cohort. Notably, the first two patients dosed with the new sub-retinal delivery system by Gyroscope Therapeutics and our innovative TAI formulation of OpRegen had no unexpected complications, so we intend to request the removal of the enrollment treatment stagger from the protocol, which should permit us to significantly accelerate our rate of enrollment. Our objective is to combine the best cells, the best production process and the best delivery system, which we believe will position us as the front-runner in the race to address the unmet opportunity in the potential billion-dollar dry AMD market.

We expect 2020 will be a year of major milestones for Lineage. Based on our existing cash and the current value of our marketable securities, we believe we will be able to achieve these milestones under our reduced 2020 spending plan, continued Mr. Culley.

Having dosed a patient with the combination of Gyroscopes recently 510(k)-cleared Orbit Subretinal Delivery System alongside Lineages new thaw-and-inject formulation of OpRegen RPE cells, I found the procedure to be relatively straightforward, leading to the successful delivery of RPE cells to the subretinal space, stated Judy Ju-Yi Chen, M.D., a retinal surgeon at West Coast Retina, San Francisco, CA. I am hopeful that additional procedures will show that this combination provides superior dose control, safety, and efficacy compared to conventional procedures.

The ETDRS eye chart consists of a set of letters of diminishing size on each line. The more letters a patient can read, the better their vision. The Company also is collecting data on rate of geographic atrophy (GA) growth, best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), low-light visual acuity, reading speed, quality of life questionnaires, microperimetry, and assessing structural changes using optical coherence tomography (OCT), fundus autofluorescence (FAF), and color fundus photography.

About the Phase I/IIa Clinical Study

This is a Phase I/IIa open-label, dose escalation safety and efficacy study of a single injection of human retinal pigment epithelium cells derived from an established pluripotent cell line and transplanted subretinally in patients with advanced dry AMD with geographic atrophy. The study will enroll approximately 24 patients, divided into 4 cohorts. The first 3 cohorts consisted solely of legally blind patients, with best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) of 20/200 or worse. The fourth cohort will include approximately 12 patients with vision ranging from 20/250 to as high as 20/64. Cohort 4 also includes patients treated with one of two formulations of OpRegen; the first 3 patients were treated with a formulation which required plating and preparation of cells one day prior to use. The remaining patients on Cohort 4 will be treated with an off-the-shelf or thaw-and-inject formulation of OpRegen which can be shipped directly to sites and used immediately upon thawing, which removes the complications and logistics of having to use a dose preparation facility. Staggered intervals within and between cohorts are applied to ensure patient safety and welfare. The primary objective of the Phase I/IIa study is to evaluate the safety and tolerability of OpRegen as assessed by the incidence and frequency of treatment emergent adverse events. Secondary objectives are to evaluate the preliminary efficacy of OpRegen treatment by assessing the changes in ophthalmological parameters measured by various methods of primary clinical relevance. Additionally, for the patients in Cohort 4 that receive subretinal delivery of OpRegen utilizing Gyroscope Therapeutics Orbit Subretinal Delivery System (Orbit SDS), objectives will include the evaluation of the safety of delivery of OpRegen using the Orbit SDS.

About OpRegen

OpRegen is a retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) transplant therapy in Phase I/IIa development for the treatment of dry AMD, a leading cause of adult blindness in the developed world. OpRegen consists of a suspension of RPE cells delivered subretinally as an intraocular injection. RPE cells are essential components of the back lining of the retina and function to help nourish the retina including photoreceptors. OpRegen has been granted Fast Track designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. OpRegen is a registered trademark of Cell Cure Neurosciences Ltd., a majority-owned subsidiary of Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc.

About Lineage Cell Therapeutics, Inc.

Lineage Cell Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel cell therapies for unmet medical needs. Lineages programs are based on its proprietary cell-based therapy platform and associated development and manufacturing capabilities. With this platform Lineage develops and manufactures specialized, terminally-differentiated human cells from its pluripotent and progenitor cell starting materials. These differentiated cells are developed either to replace or support cells that are dysfunctional or absent due to degenerative disease or traumatic injury or administered as a means of helping the body mount an effective immune response to cancer. Lineages clinical assets include (i) OpRegen, a retinal pigment epithelium transplant therapy in Phase I/IIa development for the treatment of dry age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the developed world; (ii) OPC1, an oligodendrocyte progenitor cell therapy in Phase I/IIa development for the treatment of acute spinal cord injuries; and (iii) VAC2, an allogeneic cancer immunotherapy of antigen-presenting dendritic cells currently in Phase I development for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. Lineage is also evaluating potential partnership opportunities for Renevia, a facial aesthetics product that was recently granted a Conformit Europenne (CE) Mark. For more information, please visit http://www.lineagecell.com or follow the Company on Twitter @LineageCell.

Forward-Looking Statements

Lineage cautions you that all statements, other than statements of historical facts, contained in this press release, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements, in some cases, can be identified by terms such as believe, may, will, estimate, continue, anticipate, design, intend, expect, could, plan, potential, predict, seek, should, would, contemplate, project, target, tend to, or the negative version of these words and similar expressions. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the development of Lineages OpRegen program, as well as Lineages spending plans. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Lineages actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements in this press release, including risks and uncertainties inherent in Lineages business and other risks in Lineages filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). Lineages forward-looking statements are based upon its current expectations and involve assumptions that may never materialize or may prove to be incorrect. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. Further information regarding these and other risks is included under the heading Risk Factors in Lineages periodic reports with the SEC, including Lineages Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 14, 2019 and its other reports, which are available from the SECs website. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they were made. Lineage undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made, except as required by law.

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Lineage Provides Update on Patient Enrollment in Phase I/IIa Clinical Study of OpRegen for the Treatment of Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration -...

IS the Christian faith like the criminal law? Does it compel us to do this or that or face dire consequences? Is it about heavenly rewards for being good and rotten punishments for sin? There is no health in us SPARE Thou those who confess their faults Did Jesus come as another criminal law giver? Or did he come to remove the scales from our eyes to liberate our true nature in the context of one law natural to us, the law of Love? You cant buy that, love, off a shelf. You cant love under orders. No, but we can let it flower within us by giving expression to the governings of our hearts in compassion, in loving kindness. If we and the world suffer, is it really sinfulness for which we call for mercy dont hit us or is it blindness for which we call for liberation, release, from the selves which are not ourselves?

With that in mind, let all our New Years hopes become our dawn. Yes, lets trumpet in a Galilean morn. Its my dawn, and yours. Its a morn which proclaims what Jesus is in our lives, the law of love in action, the love which comes from within us, from the heart where the Kingdom stands, the heart of Jesus within us. He has no need to come again. He never left us.

It was to insinuate all this that last week I wrote of a Eucharist of the imagination, a Mass with no altar, no chalice, paten, host nor wine. Perhaps it sounded very odd. But think about it. Is it really more difficult to turn air into flesh as wine into blood, or water into wine? Theyre all mysteries, arent they? (Is a mystery in this sense a polite word for magic?) We know, well we say and believe, that in the Mass we experience Jesus real presence. Thats a mystery too. We call it a sacrament, an outward and visible sign of an interior, spiritual grace. And when we suppose that thats the product of working with visible, tangible, things, its all very comforting. But do we really have to work with tangible things as the sine qua non for spiritual grace, to experience the real presence?

Remember, Jesus presence is a multiple presence. Hes present, we say, in his Word when the Gospel is read. We say that he presides at the Eucharist in and through his priest. Hes present in the Eucharistic community, those of one body with him. We say we dwell in him and he in us. Hes present whenever two or three are gathered together. In none of these are we talking about a physical presence in a particular place or object. Were talking about a spiritual and personal presence experienced in our hearts and minds, not our stomachs. Its a presence unique to each of us Jesus knows us by our names yet common to all. The bread and wine at the Eucharist give us the focus for that presence, like two shafts of light in a dark room. But theyre not the presence itself.

What does that presence actually mean? It means we acknowledge the divine source of grace within us, Jesus himself. We just know hes there. Its like being in the presence of friends when we read their letters, or by remembering them as when we touch something theyve given us. Its like ever feeling that those weve loved, now dead, are with us, that theyve returned to us as the dead do in time. As with Jesus at the synagogue at Nazareth reading from Isaiah, his presence is as real as if wed said: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Its Jesus spirit which rests upon and within us. And what that means is that we too are spiritually anointed, commissioned, to preach the Gospel of Love; and that, love, really doesnt depend on the presence of physical things to give it life. Its as if we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the bread of life. And it translates into the Eucharistic prayer: Unite us in Christ and give us your peace that we may do your work and be his body in the world. Yes, we too have been commissioned to do his work, to become his hands, to become the presence of his love. We dont have to manufacture it. Its there within us. Our job is to understand that and live it, and so heal the broken-hearted, preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised (Luke 4:18). And this, the presence of Jesus within us to awaken us, the real us, to complete the work he has given us to do, is the most wonderful gift of heaven. The Eucharist, the visible sign of hidden grace, helps us understand that. Tangible things prove nothing. Maybe imagination is even more powerful. So yes, in this New Years dawn what finer commitment to the Jesus within, our hands as his can there possibly be?

Go safely, then until the next time.

New Years resolution, from the boundary: Im not going to die because I failed as someone else. Id rather just succeed at being me (Margaret Cho).

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FROM THE BOUNDARY: New year, new dawn Part two - Barbados Advocate

By Science News StaffJan. 2, 2020 , 10:50 AM

Incessant political turmoil in the United Kingdom, United States, and other nations will likely last well into the new year, complicating many researchers work. The U.K. election last month made the countrys departure from the European Union a near-certainty, and its scientists now face losing EU science grants and scientific collaborators. In the United States, a presidential election in November will determine the role of scientists in future policy deliberations; many experts on climate change and other environmental issues assert that the Trump administration has ignored scientific evidence. In this section,Sciences news staff forecasts other areas of policy and research likely to make news this year amid the chaos, from dark matter detectors to new efforts to rein in loss of species.

This year will see an attempt to revitalize the ambitious Aichi Biodiversity Targets, named for the city in Japan where they were negotiated. Since they were approved 10 years ago, there has been little to no progress in meeting most of those 20 goals, such as preventing the decline of endangered species. That alarming situation was highlighted last year in a major scientific assessment by another organization, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. But in October, nations will have a chance to try to set a more effective course when they meet in Kunming, China, to review and revise the Convention on Biological Diversity, the world's flagship conservation pact.

The politics of climate change faces crucial moments this year. The Trump administration's opposition to regulations reducing fossil fuel emissions has emerged as a primary talking point for the president's Democratic challengers. One day after the U.S. presidential election on 3 November, the country, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is set to leave the Paris climate accord, although a Democratic president could quickly rejoin after taking office in 2021. Less than 1 week later, the United Nations will convene in Glasgow, U.K., for its most important climate summit since 2015, where nations are expected to increase their pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissionseven though they are behind on meeting existing ones. Without stepped-up efforts, there is little hope the world can keep future warming below 2C, the level scientists forecast will produce catastrophic damage to human communities and ecosystems.

The U.S. government has conducted a decennial census since 1790. But the 2020 census that kicks off on 1 April faces unprecedented political challenges. Although civil rights groups won a fight to block a question about citizenship that the Trump administration wanted to add, it has ordered the Census Bureau to generate the equivalent data using existing government records so that states can use the information when they redraw boundaries for federal and state elections. Researchers fear that assignment may not be doable, and that the political debate has further alienated those already hardest to count. Demographers also worry that the census' use of a new way to protect respondents' privacy could distort analyses of demographic trends. At stake are not only how more than $1.5 trillion in federal funds are distributed each year, but also the integrity of the nation's largest statistical agency.

The CRISPR gene-editing tool faces key tests this year of its promise to treat cancer and genetic diseases. A small U.S. clinical trial is using CRISPR to disable three genes in T cells that are then returned to a cancer patient's body, an approach that could help these immune system soldiers stop malignant cells from growing and extend patients' lives. More results may also come from separate CRISPR cancer trials in China. Other researchers are working to treat people with sickle cell disorder and thalassemia by using the DNA editor to turn on the gene for a fetal version of hemoglobin to compensate for a defective adult form of the oxygen-carrying protein; last fall, scientists reported success in two patients and in 2020 will present longer-term results for a larger group. Another clinical trial in the United States could show whether CRISPR improves vision in people with an inherited disorder that causes progressive blindness.

Ancient proteins will shed new light this year on the identity and behavior of humans and other animals that lived more than 1 million years ago. Proteins are more stable than DNA, and as analytical methods improve, researchers can apply them to understand more about older fossils lacking DNA, including the sex and age of remains of enigmatic ancient hominins. Most hominins are known by bones and teeth alone, and proteins could provide a new tool for sorting them in family trees and to identify fragments too small to classify. Although tooth enamel offers the best source of ancient proteins, researchers are also extracting them from bones and hair. In addition, proteins can reveal new information about artifacts made of plant and animal materials, and researchers hope this year to analyze parchment manuscripts and the beeswax once used to seal documents. Scientists are also analyzing residues on pots for more clues to whether early pastoralists in the steppelands of Mongolia, for example, drank camel or goat milk firstand what people living on the edge of the Roman Empire in England ate.

Proteins in these 400-year-old bone fragments, found in Iroquois settlements in Canada, revealed whether they were animal or human.

The political debate over how to respond to China's emergence as a scientific superpower is likely to intensify this year. In the United States, some federal agencies have banned their employees from participating in foreign talent recruitment programsan approach that China has used to connect with thousands of scientiststo prevent disclosure of information that could damage national security and U.S. economic competitiveness. Two new bodies created by Congress will work to harmonize practices across federal agencies and chew over how best to balance openness and security. U.S. academic leaders are hoping to convince policymakers not to fence off certain types of research, which they say would throttle U.S. innovation. A new report to the National Science Foundation says teaching students and faculty members about acceptable and unacceptable behavior is a better approach.

Japan is expanding neutrino research to better understand properties of the phantom particles and the cosmic processes that produce them. This spring, scientists will increase the sensitivity of the 22-year-old Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory by doping water in its observation chamber with the rare-earth metal gadolinium. The detector will then watch for signals generated when neutrinos from supernovae hit the water, providing clues about the dynamics within those exploding stars. Japan's legislature is expected to fund an even bigger step: construction of the 72 billion Japanese yen ($660 million) Hyper-Kamiokande. Ten times larger than its predecessor, it will capture that much more data about neutrinos emanating from the Sun, distant stars, and supernovae.

The race to detect hypothetical particles of dark matterthe invisible stuff that binds together the galaxies with its gravityenters a new phase this year with the startup of two powerful new underground detectors. Since the 1980s, physicists have used ever bigger and more sensitive ones to search for so-called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), theorized to weigh 100 times as much as protons and to interact with other matter only through the feeble weak nuclear force. This year, the XENON-NT detector, which contains 8 tons of frigid liquid xenon, will turn on in the subterranean Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. At the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) detector, which contains 10 tons of liquid xenon, will also power up. If XENON-NT and the LZ see nothing in the next few years, dark matter hunters could push for bigger WIMP detectors or set their sights on other hypothesized forms of dark matter. The Italian lab's future also remains uncertain, as former lab officials face prosecution for allegedly allowing contamination of local drinking water.

The LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter detector is readied to record data at an underground lab in South Dakota.

The genome editor CRISPR is reinvigorating the beleaguered field of xenotransplantation, which aims to surgically replace human organs or tissues with ones harvested from animals such as pigs. Novel clinical trials of the strategy could launch this year. Xenotransplantation has long promised to alleviate a chronic shortage of human livers, hearts, and other organs. It could also provide corneas to cure blindness and insulin-producing islet cells to replace those destroyed by diabetes. But time and time again in earlier tests, human immune systems have quickly destroyed the foreign transplants. Recent CRISPR experiments have modified genes in pigs to prevent or dampen human immune responses to their tissue and have removed DNA from the porcine genome that could spawn potentially dangerous viruses in a person. Transplants from these edited pigs to monkeys, a key test of safety and efficacy before human trials, have demonstrated long-term viability in their new hosts.

This year, China is expected to win the race to build the world's first exascale computer, capable of carrying out 1 billion billion (1018) calculations per second, also known as an exaflop. Just which supercomputer will be the first remains uncertain, as China has set up a competition between three institutions: the National Supercomputing Center of Tianjin, the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan, and Dawning Information Industry Co., a manufacturer also known as Sugon. The new Chinese supercomputers, and others to follow in the European Union, Japan, and the United States, will be used to analyze vast data sets from astronomical and genetic surveys, and will support the continued rise of artificial intelligence. Some computer scientists expected the exascale milestone to have come sooner; delays resulted in part from the need to develop energy efficient computer chips.

Alzheimers drug The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will decide whether to approve aducanumab, an antibody drug designed to bust the brain-clogging amyloid plaques of Alzheimer's disease. The experimental treatment has shown mixed success in clinical trials.

Ocean conservation The United Nations intends to finish plans for a Decade of Ocean Science to begin in 2021. The goal is to coordinate work by scientists around the world to help improve ocean health. One expected emphasis is mapping more of the world's vulnerable marine ecosystems and biodiversity hot spots and more of the ocean's bottom, only about 4% of which has been charted in high resolution.

Stem cell funding California voters will decide in November whether to allocate $5.5 billion from bond sales to keep alive the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The funding agency was created through a $3 billion ballot initiative in 2004 to translate stem cell research into new therapies.

Curated and edited by Jeffrey Brainard.

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The science stories likely to make headlines in 2020 - Science Magazine

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a sight-threatening complication of diabetes and the main cause of blindness in the United States among working adults. Initially, DR progresses as a non-proliferative DR (NPDR) which leads to blinding proliferative DR (PDR). Nearly all people with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) undergo gradual vision loss over a 20-year period of diabetes, and about 2030% of them progress to the advanced blinding stage of the disease, PDR.

Tight glycaemic management lowers the risk of complications, yet, many diabetic patients develop DR, despite having good glycaemic control. Furthermore, there is no cure or a preventive measure to block PDR. Only recently, over the past decade, with the advent of medicines that block the actions of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), has considerable progress been made in therapeutic options for PDR.

Nevertheless, not all patients achieve a satisfactory response and many of responders experience frequent invasive intravitreal injections and off-target effects, including increased risk of neuronal toxicity and geographic atrophy. While additional molecular targets, including the plasma kallikrein pathway, lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) and Tie-2, have been identified, with some being clinically evaluated, a critical gap still remains ineffective treatments.

Evidence suggests that targeting DR in the earlier stages, such as mild to moderate NPDR, before permanent damage occurs, would provide long-term benefit. In recent years, our research has focused on the molecular mechanisms of early DR including retinal oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, mitophagy, inflammation, and premature cell death in diabetes using both in vitro retinal cell cultures and in vivo diabetic rodent models.

Intriguingly, we have discovered a protein called thioredoxin-interacting protein (TXNIP) is strongly induced by diabetes in early DR where it is responsible for mediating cellular oxidative stress, mitophagy, inflammation and premature cell death. Knockdown of TXNIP by intravitreal injection of TXNIP shRNA prevents early molecular defects seen in DR. TXNIP binds to and inhibits the anti-oxidant and thiol-reducing capacity of thioredoxins (Trx) causing cellular redox imbalance and oxidative stress. Trx1 is present in the cytosol and nucleus while Trx2 is located in the mitochondrion. TXNIP is observed in all cellular compartments. Therefore, targeting TXNIP itself or downstream pathways could prevent or slow down the progression of early DR (NPDR) and hence PDR.

Currently, no clinically used, professional TXNIP inhibitors exist; however, several FDA-approved medicines have been reported to interfere with TXNIP pathway, but none of them has been used to treat DR. These drugs include amlexanox, tranilast, and romidepsin and they have been extensively studied for their efficacy, toxicity and safety. This consequently leads to saving time and money and may accelerate their entry to experimental clinical trials centred on targeting an over-activated TXNIP system to arrest DR away from their initial use.

Amlexanox is an inhibitor of TANK-Binding Kinase 1 (TBK1), which phosphorylates mitophagy adaptor optineurin and regulates mitophagic flux to lysosomes. In addition, TBK1 also phosphorylates interferon responsive factor 3 (IRF3) and mediates Type 1 interferon expression and inflammation. Tranilast has been shown to inhibit TXNIP and Nod-like NLRP3 inflammasome; therefore, it may help in preventing cellular oxidative stress and innate immune responses.

Therefore, a combination therapy using amlexanox and tranilast may prove to be effective in preventing or slowing down the progression of DR. Recently, we also demonstrated that a combination therapy of SS-31 (a mitochondria-targeted anti-oxidant), amlexanox and tranilast prevents auranofin-induced redox stress, mitochondrial-lysosomal axis dysregulation and proinflammatory pyroptotic cell death in retinal pigment epithelial cells, suggesting that combination therapies may be more effective than a single drug therapy.

In addition to drug treatment, gene therapy using a TXNIP promoter linked with a neuroprotective factor or an anti-oxidant gene may also be a potential approach for DR treatment. This is because the TXNIP promoter is strongly induced by hyperglycaemia in retinal cells in culture and in diabetic rodent retinas, but not under physiological glucose levels. In addition, the TXNIP promoter is also activated significantly by histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi), including suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) or romidepsin.

Therefore, HDACi and TXNIP-promoter gene therapy may also be incorporated in DR therapy for retinal neuroprotective gene expression, which could include pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), glia-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), thioredoxin encoded Rod-Derived Cone Viability Factor (RdCVF) and others. These factors are known to be downregulated in DR.

It is currently accepted that neurodegeneration (particularly photoreceptor dysfunction) occurs early in DR before microvascular pathology develops. Therefore, early neuroprotective efforts may constitute a meaningful therapeutical approach to prevent or slow down the progression of late microvascular complications and PDR. Diabetes is a chronic and complex metabolic disease in which PDR develops only after prolonged hyperglycaemic exposure.

Therefore, a window of diabetic duration may exist early to prevent retinal neurovascular dysfunction and progression of PDR; within this time frame, we may devise preventive interventions activating endogenous genes or factors with neuroprotective drugs (preferably orally active drugs) and gene therapy including those mentioned above.

Such a hypothesis is supported by a recent observation, which showed that the expression of retinol binding protein 3 (RBP3), a protein secreted by photoreceptors in the retina, may play a protective role against PDR. RBP3 interacts with glucose transporter Glut1 and reduces excess cellular glucose uptake under hyperglycaemia in diabetics, thus, preventing glucotoxicity in retinal cells including Muller glia and capillary endothelial cells. Those individuals expressing RBP3 do not develop PDR although they have had 50 years of T1D.

In conclusion, new preventive therapies for PDR may be successfully developed by activating endogenous cellular survival mechanisms using drug and gene therapies once a clinical sign of NPDR is observed but before PDR. Such treatments may prevent blindness in diabetic patients.

References

1 Perrone L, Devi TS, Hosoya KI, Terasaki T, Singh LP. Inhibition of TXNIP expression in vivo blocks early pathologies of diabetic retinopathy. Cell Death Dis. 2010 Aug 19;1:e65. PMID: 21364670.

2 Devi TS, Somayajulu M, Kowluru RA, Singh LP. TXNIP regulates mitophagy in retinal Mller cells under high-glucose conditions: implications for diabetic retinopathy. Cell Death Dis. 2017 May 11;8(5):e2777. PMID: 28492550.

3 Lalit PS, Thangal Y, Fayi Y, Takhellambam SD. Potentials of Gene Therapy for Diabetic Retinopathy: The Use of Nucleic Acid Constructs Containing a TXNIP Promoter. Open Access J Ophthalmol. 2018;3(2). PMID: 31106306.

4 Devi TS, Yumnamcha T, Yao F, Somayajulu M, Kowluru RA, Singh LP. TXNIP mediates high glucose-induced mitophagic flux and lysosome enlargement in human retinal pigment epithelial cells. Biol Open. 2019 Apr 25;8(4). PMID: 31023645.

5 Yumnamcha T, Devi TS, Singh LP. Auranofin Mediates Mitochondrial Dysregulation and Inflammatory Cell Death in Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells: Implications of Retinal Neurodegenerative Diseases. Front Neurosci. 2019 Oct 10;13:1065. PMID: 31649499.

6 Yokomizo H, Maeda Y, Park K, Clermont AC, Hernandez SL, et. al., Retinol binding protein 3 is increased in the retina of patients with diabetes resistant to diabetic retinopathy. Sci Transl Med. 2019 Jul 3;11(499). PMID: 31270273.

7 Ibrahim AS, Saleh H, El-Shafey M, Hussein KA, et. al., Targeting of 12/15-Lipoxygenase in retinal endothelial cells, but not in monocytes/macrophages, attenuates high glucose-induced retinal leukostasis. BBA: Mol Cell Biol Lipids. 2017 Jun;1862(6):636-645. PMID: 28351645.

8 Ibrahim AS, Elshafey S, Sellak H, Hussein KA, El-Sherbiny M, et. al., A lipidomic screen of hyperglycemia-treated HRECs links 12/15-Lipoxygenase to microvascular dysfunction during diabetic retinopathy via NADPH oxidase. J Lipid Res. 2015 Mar;56(3):599-611. PMID: 25598081.

Funding

NIH/NEI R01 EY023992 (LSP, OVAS).

NIH/NEI core grant P30EY004068 (LDH, OVAS).

Research to Prevent Blindness (MSJ, OVAS).

American Heart Association Grant 18CDA34080403 to ASI.

Please note: This is a commercial profile

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Repurposing FDA-approved medicines and gene therapy to combat diabetic retinopathy - Open Access Government

Global Musculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapy Market Growth (Status and Outlook) 2019-2024 Overview :

According to this study, over the next five years the Musculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapy market will register a xx% CAGR in terms of revenue, the global market size will reach US$ xx million by 2024

A newly revealed market research study titledGlobal Musculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapy MarketbyMRInsights.biz, studies market insights, list of significant key professionals, threats of new competitors and alternate products. The report presents in-depth analysis along with competitive insights, segmentation, and the market size information. In addition, it exploresMusculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapymarket size, trends, share, growth, development plans, growth opportunity, cost structure and drivers analysis.One part of this report contains production in which analysis on the production, revenue, gross margin of its main manufacturers in different regions from 2014 to 2019 has been covered. It also makes a prediction of its production and consumption in coming 2019-2024. The report provides a detailed analysis by the categorization of the global market on the basis of regions.

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Globally top leading manufacturers listed here: Osiris Therapeutics, NuVasive, Takeda (TiGenix), Medi-post,

Market region segmentation:

Furthermore, the SWOT analysis and strategies of each vendor are highlighted in the report which can be employed to create future opportunities.It sheds light on its applications, types, deployments, components, growths of this market. The research has also carried out analysis on upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers. Next, it analyzes volume, utilization value, sale price, import and export in different regions from 2014 to 2019. On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, while for end use/application segment, this report focuses on the status and outlook for key applications.

The GlobalMusculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell TherapyMarket Report Contains:

Next, the raw data collected through several sources has been processed using various mathematical and analytical tools and techniques in order to conclude the significant information related to future growth prediction trend for 2019 to 2024 time frame. At the end, research findings and conclusions specified in the report will help decision makers to take vital choices in the near future.

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There are 12 Chapters to deeply display the globalMusculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapymarket.

Chapter 1:Scope of the Report

Chapter 2:Executive Summary

Chapter 3:GlobalMusculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapyby Manufacturers

Chapter 4:Musculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapyby Regions

Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9:Americas,APAC,Europe,Middle East & Africa,Market Drivers, Challenges and Trends

Chapter 10 and 11:GlobalMusculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell TherapyMarket Forecast,Key Players Analysis

Chapter 12 :Research Findings and Conclusion.

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Global Musculoskeletal Disorder Stem Cell Therapy Market 2019 2024 Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment by Industry Analysis across the Value...