Tag Archives: king

How war changes the mind of a warrior

Memorial Day is an appropriate time to focus on the types of psychological harm veterans have willingly exposed themselves to in order to defend our nation.  While words like post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression and post-concussion syndrome have become well-known, the true suffering of individuals with such illnesses—caused by combat or proximity to it—still isn’t as well known. It is one thing to imagine and empathize with the plight of a man or woman without limbs, who cannot walk or run or jump, but it is arguably more difficult to imagine and empathize with the suffering of those whose emotional equilibrium, memory, concentration, sleep patterns and even grasp on reality have been shredded. So, I hope I can help bring those wounds into focus. Men and women are born with an inexplicable, immeasurable and intensely beautiful quality: human empathy.  We resonate with the feelings of others.  This fact means we are also exquisitely vulnerable to conditions that expose us to the destruction of others – not to mention threaten our own existence.   I often tell my patients that the soul is like a Ferrari, not a Camry.  Treat it like a tank, not an exotic vehicle, and all manner of damage can result—and routinely does.  It is popular to speak of people as resilient, and there is some truth to this.  But it is perhaps more truthful that people are finely tuned emotional instruments who choose to put themselves in harm’s way out of love for their fellow man, and cannot then be expected – with rare exception – to come through it all unscathed.   When people, however brave or strong, live for protracted periods in a war zone, in which they must bury the natural fear of death, natural pangs of grief and the natural horror of killing, all that buried emotion does not remain underground.  It resurfaces like shards of glass and steel, walled off under the skin, until abscesses develop and eventually burst to the surface, shredding any façade of peace.  This is when the sadness of leaving one’s family for years, taking the unspeakable risk of never seeing one’s loved ones again, can erupt as nightmares that shatter sleeping patterns, or hopelessness and despair that tear up any plans for the future.  This is when the horror of watching good friends die, when the anxiety of marching into trouble over and over again manifests as flashbacks to unspeakable and unfathomable events, or panic of death and destruction that comes out of nowhere.  This is when marching into hell, with one’s God-given, highly-calibrated, compassionate, soulful self, means you bring hell back with you – inside you. No one who goes to war ever comes home – not in the emotional, psychological sense.  No one.  Some make it back, mostly—which is an amazing and happy fact.  Most make it back far less—which is fully expected but still not acknowledged as widely as it must be.  And some return only physically, and are forever unrecognizable psychologically. This is the unspoken risk our warriors take when they leave us to fight.  We worry over their legs and their eyes, but we still don’t fully grasp the peril in which they place their psyches and their souls. That men and women take these risks, and willingly, is nothing short of miraculous. This is why, on Memorial Day – and every day – we should remember all fighting men and women, thank them and thank God for them.Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/27/how-war-changes-mind-warrior/

Modulating the immune system to combat metastatic cancer

In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Ronald Levy at Stanford University found that regulatory T cells that infiltrate tumors express proteins that can be targeted with therapeutic antibodies. Mice injected with antibodies targeting the proteins CTLA-4 and OX-40 had smaller tumors and improved survival. …

Pregnant woman dies, gives birth, comes back to life

When a pregnant teacher in Texas collapsed, her coworkers rushed to help. The woman technically died, gave birth and then was brought back to life. Erica Nigrelli, an English teacher at Elkins High School in Missouri City, Texas, collapsed in a co-worker's classroom when she was 36 weeks pregnant. “Apparently I told her, 'I feel very faint,' and I put my head down and I essentially just passed out,” Erica Nigrelli said. Erica's husband, Nathan, is also a teacher at Elkins. “I opened the door and walked in and Erica was laying on the floor,” he said. Erica Nigrelli's heart had stopped. Some co-workers started CPR and used a defibrillator to get it working again. They kept her alive until paramedics came and rushed her to the hospital. Doctors delivered baby Elayna by emergency caesarean section. It was technically a post-mortem delivery because Erica's heart wasn't beating. “There were two lives that were hanging in the balance the whole time.” Erica Nigrelli had an undetected heart defect, and the fact mom and baby are here today is a testament to her co-workers. Erica Nigrelli is only 32 years old, but doctors installed a pacemaker. Three-month-old Elayna now weighs a whopping 9 pounds, and could be off oxygen as early as next week. Click for more from My Fox Las Vegas. source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/24/pregnant-woman-dies-gives-birth-comes-back-to-life/

Simple vision test may predict IQ

A simple visual test is surprisingly accurate at predicting IQ, according to new research. The study, published May 23 in the journal Current Biology, found that people's ability to efficiently filter out visual information in the background and focus on the foreground is strongly linked to IQ. The findings could help scientists identify the brain processes responsible for intelligence. That doesn't mean snappy, efficient visual processing leads to smarts, said study co-author Duje Tadin, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York. Instead, common brain processes may underlie both intelligence and efficient visual processing. IQ hunting Since the 1800s, the forefathers of IQ testing, including Sir Francis Galton (who also pioneered the science of fingerprinting), suspected that highly intelligent people also have supersensory discrimination. But studies in the subsequent decades have found only a modest connection between IQ-test scores and peoples ability to quickly or accurately spot motion in images. Tadin and his colleagues were studying a separate question on visual perception in 12 participants when they found something striking: IQ seemed to be correlated strongly with performance on a visual task. The test asked users to spot the direction of motion on a series of black-and-white stripes on a screen. Sometimes, the lines formed inside a small central circle, and other times, they were large stripes that took up the entire screen. Participants also completed a short IQ test. [Watch Video of Motion and Test Your Smarts] The team noticed that people with higher IQs were good at spotting motion in the small circles, but terrible at detecting motion in the larger black-and-white stripes. Because they had looked at so few people, Tadin and his colleagues wondered if their results were a fluke. They repeated the experiment with 53 people, who also took a full IQ test. The ability to visually filter the motion strongly predicted IQ in fact, motion suppression (the ability to focus on the action and ignore background movements) was as predictive of total IQ as individual subsections of the IQ test itself. Relevant information As people walk, the background scenery is always changing, so efficient brains may be better at filtering out this irrelevant visual information. And that efficiency could be operating across a wide range of tasks, Tadin said. “What happens in brains of high-IQ people is, they're automatically processing motion of small moving objects efficiently, whereas they're suppressing the background,” Tadin said. The findings reshape the conventional view that quick thinking leads to smarts. “Speedy processing does matter, but it's only half the story. It's how you filter out things that are less relevant and focus your speedy resources on what is important,” Tadin said. Big variation The study reveals new insights into brain efficiency and smarts, said Kevin McGrew, director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics and owner of www.themindhub.com. Even though the link between IQ and visual filtering was very strong, IQ tests won't be replaced by motion tracking anytime soon, said McGrew, who was not involved in the study. “Their task accounts for or explains about 50 percent of the IQ scores,” McGrew told LiveScience. “That is impressive in psychology, but it still means there is 50 percent of the scores that they're not explaining.” Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/24/simple-vision-test-predicts-iq/

Errors in cloning study cast doubt on publication process

A headline-making paper last week announcing that scientists had, for the first time, cloned human embryos and harvested stem cells from them contains minor errors, the authors acknowledged on Thursday.  The mistakes raised questions about how well the journal that published the paper vetted it but probably do not undermine the study's central claim. In a statement, the journal, Cell, said “there were some minor errors” in the paper, but “we do not believe these errors impact the scientific findings of the paper.” An anonymous commenter on the website PubPeer, where scientists discuss papers after they have been published, first pointed out problems with the paper, which drew extensive media coverage. Even before the errors were spotted, however, there was concern among experts not involved in the study that Cell had rushed publication. It received the manuscript on April 30, tapped outside scientists to review it in the standard process called peer review, asked the authors to make revisions based on that review and accepted the paper on May 3. When asked about the short turnaround time last week, Cell spokeswoman Mary Beth O'Leary said the paper “underwent a rigorous peer review and editorial process.” Outside experts disagree. A three-day review process “is almost impossibly fast,” said cell biologist Jim Woodgett of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada. “To have a paper like this received, reviewed, revised and accepted so quickly is very, very unusual.” In a statement on Thursday, Cell referred to “the preeminence of the reviewers” (whom it would not identify) and said it has “no reason to doubt the thoroughness or rigor of the review process.” The rapid turnaround was possible because the reviewers “graciously agreed to prioritize” the paper. DOLLY REDUX The paper described how scientists led by biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University accomplished what others had failed to: “therapeutic cloning” in humans. That procedure begins with a human egg. The Oregon scientists removed its genetic material, or DNA, then took an adult skin cell and fused it with the egg. The DNA in the skin cell took over, causing the egg to begin developing as if it had been fertilized. This “somatic cell nuclear transfer” was used to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996. But in this case, the goal was not a human being; Mitalipov said last week that scientists would not implant the dividing embryo into a womb so that it could develop into a baby. Instead, the aim was a dishful of stem cells, which can morph into any of the 200-plus cells in the human body and might be used therapeutically, such as to replace cells lost to degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's. After a few days, the human embryo contained exactly that: stem cells that the Oregon scientists could use to start cell lines. The errors in the Cell paper involve photographs and data plots, something OHSU spokesman Jim Newman said was “an editing error, not issues with the research or the data itself. “OHSU agrees that there were some minor errors made when preparing the figures for initial submission,” Newman said, adding that the university does not believe the errors “impact the scientific findings of the paper in any way. We also do not believe there was any wrongdoing.” In one case, an image described as a cloned stem-cell colony is reproduced in another image, where it is labeled an embryonic stem-cell line derived from in vitro fertilization (IVF), not cloning. Mitalipov told the journal Nature that the label is wrong, and that another labeling mistake explained other duplicated images. Another error was in images purporting to show that the genes that are turned on in stem cells derived from the cloned embryo (such as genes that make a cell a neuron) are similar to those in stem cells taken from IVF embryos, considered the gold standard for embryonic stem cells. The point was that the stem cells taken from the cloned embryos are true stem cells. The problem, said the anonymous reviewer on PubPeer, is that the two images - genes activated in IVF stem cells and in clone stem cells - are suspiciously identical. Mitalipov said one image used the wrong data, and that he and his team are correcting it. While the mistakes seem innocent, they raised concerns among stem-cell researchers because the field has been struck by fraud in the past. In 2004 scientists led by Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University claimed to have produced human embryonic stem cells through the same technique used by the Oregon team. Their paper, published in Science, turned out to contain fabricated data. That came to light when scientists figured out that some of the images in the paper were copied or manipulated. “When I read the Hwang paper, I didn't find any glaring problems” at first, stem-cell biologist George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute said, explaining how difficult it is to spot fraud. “I am waiting to learn more, but there is a difference between errors in photomicrographs and fraudulent production of cell lines,” he said. So far, most scientists' ire is being directed at Cell more than the Oregon researchers. “To thoroughly evaluate the claims requires delving into the data, and you can't expect people to do that in a day or two,” said Mount Sinai's Woodgett, referring to peer review. “You're forcing them to be superficial.” Science journals compete intensely for “hot” papers, which can translate into headlines, subscriptions and advertising. Cell is published by Elsevier, a division of Reed Elsevier . Six years ago, Nature held up by six months a paper by Mitalipov in which his team used the Dolly method to clone monkey embryos, the journal reported on Wednesday. Scientists sometimes shop around hot papers, seeking a journal that will publish it fastest. Mitalipov told Nature he was in a hurry to get his Cell paper out before a stem cell meeting in June.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/24/errors-in-cloning-study-cast-doubt-on-publication-process/

Sugar water injections may help ease knee pain

Knee pain appears to decrease up to one year after “prolotherapy,” a series of sugar water injections at the site of the pain, according to a new study. Previous research on the therapy that suggested positive effects was plagued by flaws, but the new report may be more reliable, according to Dr. John D. Loeser, a pain specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. “This is a well-performed clinical trial that deals with many of the issues that have clouded prior reports of prolotherapy,” Loeser, who was not involved in the study and has spoken out against the practice in the past, told Reuters Health in an email. Knee osteoarthritis is common, especially among people over 65, but no single therapy has proven particularly beneficial. In prolotherapy, which costs $200 to $1000 per session and is not covered by Medicare, small amounts of solution are injected at multiple painful ligament and tendon locations in the knee over several sessions. The hope is that a new minor irritation will stimulate the body to repair both old damage and new. “The idea is to stimulate a local healing reaction,” lead author Dr. David Rabago, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, told Reuters Health. Rabago and his colleagues divided 90 people with knee osteoarthritis and between ages 40 and 76 years old into three groups: one got sugar-water prolotherapy injections, another got salt-water placebo injections, and the third was instructed in at-home exercise and received no injections. The first two groups got injections at least three times, sometimes more if they asked for it, over 17 weeks, and were followed for one year. The sugar water group reported better knee function, improving 16 points on a 100-point scale of osteoarthritis severity, compared to 5 points for saline and 7 points for the exercise group. The sugar water group also reported less frequent and less severe pain, improving 14 points on the same scale, at one year, while the salt water and exercise groups improved 7 points and 9 points, respectively. The study was small but not too small and included the right type of subjects: typical sufferers of knee osteoarthritis, researchers said. One of the things that has held back previous studies of prolotherapy is the difficulty of mimicking the injections for a placebo group without actually injecting them with something - that makes it difficult to tell what's causing the improvements, the sugar water itself or the needle stick, bleeding or stretching the tissue, which can all have effects. “The best one can do is ‘control' for those effects by testing an agent against a similar treatment and varying only one thing, which is what we did,” Rabago said. But since the salt water group and the exercise-only groups had similar results, the benefit was probably not a placebo response, Loeser said. “This study yields results that are more favorable than other carefully controlled studies of prolotherapy in other regions,” Loeser said. But there are a lot of questions to answer before this becomes widely adopted, he cautioned. “Certainly, additional studies are needed before one accepts prolotherapy as standard treatment for knee OA,” Loeser said. Researchers don't yet know how long the pain benefit will persist after one year. But Rabago said, “These results support its use as routine care for knee OA in patients who have not improved with more conservative measures.” Though he doesn't yet know how prolotherapy works, he added that he would recommend the treatment for a member of his own family.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/24/sugar-water-injections-may-help-ease-knee-pain/

Frequent heartburn may predict cancers of the throat and vocal cord

"Previous studies examining gastric reflux and cancers of the head and neck have generated mixed results," said Scott M. Langevin, Ph.D., postdoctoral research fellow at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "Most of those studies had either few numbers of cases or they were not adjusted for confounding factors…

Scientists discover how rapamycin slows cell growth

"Cells normally monitor the availability of nutrients and will slow down or accelerate their growth and division accordingly. A key monitor of nutrients is a protein called the Target of Rapamycin (TOR), but we do not know the details of how this protein feeds signals downstream to control growth" says Dr. Stephen Michnick, senior author and a University of Montreal biochemistry professor…

New screening approach uncovers potential alternative drug therapies for neuroblastoma

"New treatment approaches are very much needed for children with high-risk childhood cancers; that is, those that are metastatic at diagnosis and likely to recur," says senior study author Kimberly Stegmaier of the Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. "By focusing on an alternative strategy to treating neuroblastoma tumors, we identified a compound class that in early testing in neuroblastoma cells in the laboratory shows promise for treating children with this disease." Beyond the standard approach of using drugs that kill tumor cells, another promising strategy is to identify compounds that promote differentiation, which causes tumor cells to stop dividing and growing. But the benefits of differentiation therapy had not been fully explored. …

Soulumination: Non-profit photographs terminally ill children for families

In 1996, Lynette Johnson, a professional photographer, was approached by her sister-in-law Sally Elliot with a difficult request.  Elliot’s daughter and Johnson’s niece, Lanie, had been stillborn and Elliot wanted Johnson to take a picture of her before her funeral. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Johnson, 59, based out of Seattle, Wash., told FoxNews.com.  “But I’m so glad I did it.” The memory of the experience stuck with Johnson, and a few years later, while shooting pictures for a wedding, the bride mentioned to Johnson that she worked for the palliative care unit at Seattle Children’s Hospital.  Johnson immediately thought back to her niece and offered to come by the hospital to take pictures for the patients’ families. “I just blurted out I would do this free of charge,” Johnson said. “It seemed like the least I could do to give back to the community.” What started as a small favor quickly blossomed into a thriving non-profit photography initiative called Soulumination.  Through the enterprise, Johnson and other volunteer photographers take professional photographs of children under the age of 18 who are facing life-threatening conditions, providing families with lasting keepsakes and “an enduring, positive record of the child’s life.” Initially, Johnson was the non-profit’s sole photographer, taking photographs of children in the greater Seattle area.  But since Soulumination’s inception, the organization has now grown to encompass more than 40 photographers and over 120 community volunteers, who help serve families across the country. “We don’t just take their photos; they get beautiful handmade albums too,” Johnson said. “But every person who is at the shoot gets their own personal one.  The mother even gets a bracelet with the child’s photo she can wear.” Johnson has now photographed hundreds of patients, including children with terminal cancer, heart disease, issues stemming from premature birth, Tay-Sachs disease and severe seizure disorders. When she first started Soulumination, Johnson said many of her friends and family would express amazement at how she was able to surround herself with such grief and pain.  But while it’s been emotionally difficult at times, she and the others continue the project without hesitation. “Once you do it, the sadness and grief in some ways feel almost unbearable, but almost every photographer says, ‘Yes, that was hard, but I’ll do it again,’” Johnson said.  “There’s just no doubt about it; it’s the right thing to do.” Johnson said that every family she has worked with has had a positive experience with the photo shoots, and not one parent has ever expressed regret over having pictures taken.  She noted that some families were hesitant to have the photographs done, as they felt it meant they were stepping into the dying process of their children.  However, Soulumination has photographed many children who do survive their illnesses. The photographs are more about honoring the individual than saying goodbye. “It means a great deal to us all,” said one Seattle mother whose daughter has been battling leukemia since 2003.  “Mainly to have the images and see [our daughter’s] expressions captured…It gives me a sense of peace to hang her and [her sister’s] pictures and make them a part of our world as it is now. So when it changes it will be there.” Soulumination operates purely on outside donations and the unpaid skills of the organization’s many photographers.  Johnson said that their work generates a fair amount of monetary contributions from people they come into contact with at the hospital or through photo shoots. She recalled a time when she took photos of a young teenage girl named Sidney, who suffered from a terminal brain tumor.  A few months after Sidney’s funeral, Johnson said she received a thick envelope in the mail. “It was a handmade card from Sidney’s mother, and she explains it’s from the last time she took an art class with Sidney,” Johnson recalled. “There was also a check in there for $1,200, and she said it was Sidney’s savings account and she knew she wanted me to have it so we could service other people. We have hundreds of heart felt ‘Thank You’s’ like that.” Johnson vows to keep Soulumination running as long as possible, and she said she has spoken with other photographers interested in starting similar initiatives in other states – and even other countries.  According to her, the project’s success must be credited to the many people who have graciously donated their money and talents to help preserve the legacies of so many children. “I’m proud of it, and I’m unbelievably thankful for the photographers,” Johnson said.  “We’re a little group that started and has now blossomed into something with national attention. The loss of my niece, which was so devastating, in her memory this thing started that will offer hope to people all over the world.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/23/soulumination-non-profit-photographs-terminally-ill-children-for-families/