Daily Archives: February 7, 2022

During the current pandemic, social distancing has been one tool used to reduce the spread of COVID-19. But data from a new study point to as much as a 27% increase in heart disease risk in postmenopausal women who experience both high levels of social isolation and loneliness.

The findings of the prospective study, published in the February 2, 2022, online issue of JAMA Network Open, reveal that social isolation and loneliness independently increased cardiovascular disease risk by 8% and 5% respectively. If women experienced high levels of both, their risk rose 13% to 27% compared to women who reported low levels of social isolation and low levels of loneliness.

We are social beings. In this time of COVID-19, many people are experiencing social isolation and loneliness, which may spiral into chronic states, said first author Natalie Golaszewski, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego. It is important to further understand the acute and long-term effects these experiences have on cardiovascular health and overall well-being.

As social networks shrink, older adults are more at risk for social isolation and loneliness. Credit: Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at University of California San Diego

Importantly, social isolation and loneliness are mildly correlated and can occur at the same time, but they are not mutually exclusive. A socially isolated person is not always lonely and conversely a person experiencing loneliness is not necessarily socially isolated.

Social isolation is about physically being away from people, like not touching or seeing or talking to other people. Loneliness is a feeling, one that can be experienced even by people who are regularly in contact with others, said senior author John Bellettiere, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of epidemiology at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health.

John Bellettiere, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego. Credit: University of California San Diego

Social isolation and loneliness are a growing public health concern as they are associated with health conditions that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease including obesity, smoking, physical inactivity, poor diet, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

When researchers included all of these health behaviors and conditions in their study and adjusted for diabetes and depression, high social isolation and loneliness remained strongly linked with increased risk for heart disease, supporting the importance of studying these social conditions.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, responsible for 1 in every 5 deaths.

As social networks shrink, older adults are more at risk for social isolation and loneliness, wrote the authors. One-fourth of adults 65 and older report social isolation and one-third of adults 45 or older report being lonely.

We do not yet know whether the increased risk of cardiovascular disease is due to acute exposure to social isolation and loneliness or whether prolonged exposure accumulated over a lifetime is the culprit. Further studies are needed to better understand that, said Bellettiere.

Previous research indicates women experience more social isolation than men.

Natalie Golaszewski, PhD, postdoctoral scholar at theHerbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego. Credit: University of California San Diego

For this study, 57,825 postmenopausal women living in the United States who had previously participated in the Womens Health Initiative study responded to questionnaires assessing social isolation from 2011 to 2012. They were sent a second questionnaire assessing loneliness and social support in 2014 to 2015.

Participants were followed from the time of the questionnaire completion through 2019 or when they were diagnosed with cardiovascular disease. A total of 1,599 women experienced cardiovascular disease.

Measures of social isolation and loneliness even with brief questions as was done in our study should be incorporated into standard care, said Golaszewski. We monitor our patients blood pressure, weight and temperature, and it might also be beneficial to capture the social needs that individuals may be lacking to better understand cardiovascular risk and develop solutions.

Individuals who feel lonely or socially isolated can find information about steps to help reduce these feelings from the National Institute on Aging.

Reference: Evaluation of Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Cardiovascular Disease Among Older Women in the US by Natalie M. Golaszewski, PhD; Andrea Z. LaCroix, PhD; Job G. Godino, PhD; Matthew A. Allison, MD, MPH; JoAnn E. Manson, MD, DrPH; Jennifer J. King, PhD; Julie C. Weitlauf, PhD; Jennifer W. Bea, PhD; Lorena Garcia, PhD; Candyce H. Kroenke, ScD; Nazmus Saquib, PhD; Brad Cannell, PhD, MPH; Steve Nguyen, PhD and John Bellettiere, PhD, 2 February 2022, JAMA Network Open.DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.46461

Co-authors include: Andrea Z. LaCroix, Steve Nguyen and Matthew A. Allison, UC San Diego; Job G. Godino, UC San Diego and Laura Rodriguez Research Institute, Family Health Centers of San Diego; JoAnn E. Manson, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Harvard Medical School; Jennifer J. King and Jennifer W. Bea; University of Arizona Cancer Center; Julie C. Weitlauf, Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University School of Medicine; Lorena Garcia, University of California Davis School of Medicine; Candyce H. Kroenke, Kaiser Permanente Northern California; Nazmus Saquib, Sulaiman Al Rajhi University; and Brad Cannell, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health-Dallas Campus.

This research was funded, in part, by the National Institute on Aging (T32AG058529, P01AG052352) the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, (R01DK114945), and the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (T31KT1501). The Womens Health Initiative was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (HHSN268-201100046C, HHSN268201100001C, HHSN26820-1100002C, HHSN268201100003C, HHSN26820-1100004C, HHSN271201100004C).

Disclosures: LaCroix reported receiving grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health (NIH) and grants from the National Institute on Aging during the conduct of the study and has been a paid consultant on a NIH grant for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Manson reported receiving grants from the NIH during the conduct of the study and grants from the NIH and Mars Edge outside the submitted work. Bea reported serving on the Womens Health Initiative Papers and Proposals Committee and being a consultant for the Western Region. Bellettiere reported receiving grants from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program during the conduct of the study and personal fees from Meta outside the submitted work.

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Loneliness and Social Isolation Increase Heart Disease Risk in Senior Women - SciTechDaily

Tate Ryan-Mosley* says that while the tech almost certainly wont work, it is a telling sign of where the field is heading.

A police officer is at the scene of a murder. No witnesses. No camera footage. No obvious suspects or motives.

Just a bit of hair on the sleeve of the victims jacket. DNA from the cells of one strand is copied and compared against a database. No match comes back, andthe case goes cold.

Corsight AI, a facial recognition subsidiary of the Israeli AI company Cortica, purports to be devising a solution for that sort of situation by using DNA to create a model of a face that can then be run through a facial recognition system.

It is a task that experts in the field regard as scientifically untenable.

Corsight unveiled its DNA to Face product in a presentation by chief executive officer Robert Watts and executive vice president Ofer Ronen intended to court financiers at the Imperial Capital Investors Conference in New York City on December 15.

It was part of the companys overall product road map, which also included movement and voice recognition.

The tool constructs a physical profile by analysing genetic material collected in a DNA sample, according to a company slide deck viewed by surveillance research group IPVM and shared with MIT Technology Review.

Corsight declined a request to answer questions about the presentation and its product road map.

We are not engaging with the press at the moment as the details of what we are doing are company confidential, Watts wrote in an email.

But marketing materials show that the company is focused on government and law enforcement applications for its technology.

Its advisory board consists only of James Woolsey, a former director of the CIA, and Oliver Revell, a former assistant director of the FBI.

The science that would be needed to support such a system doesnt yet exist, however, and experts say the product would exacerbate the ethical, privacy, and bias problems facial recognition technology already causes.

More worryingly, its a signal of the industrys ambitions for the future, where face detection becomes one facet of a broader effort to identify people by any available meanseven inaccurate ones.

This story wasjointly reported with Donald Maye of IPVM who reportedthat prior to this presentation, IPVM was unaware of a company attempting to commercialize a face recognition product associated with a DNA sample.

A chequered past

Corsights idea is not entirely new.

Human Longevity, a genomics-based, health intelligence company founded by Silicon Valley celebrities Craig Venter andPeter Diamandis, claimed to haveused DNA to predict facesin 2017.

MIT Technology Review reported then thatexperts, however, were doubtful.

A former employee of Human Longevity said the company cant pick a person out of a crowd using a genome, and Yaniv Erlich, chief science officer of the genealogy platform MyHeritage,published a response laying out major flawsin the research.

A small DNA informatics company, Parabon NanoLabs, provides law enforcement agencies with physical depictions of people derived from DNA samples through a product line called Snapshot, which includes genetic genealogy as well as 3D renderings of a face.

(Parabonpublishes some cases on its websitewith comparisons between photos of people the authorities are interested in finding and renderings the company has produced.)

Parabons computer-generated composites also come with a set of phenotypic characteristics, like eye and skin colour, that are given a confidence score.

For example, a composite might say that theres an 80 per cent chance the person being sought has blue eyes.

Forensic artists also amend the composites to create finalized face models that incorporate descriptions of nongenetic factors, like weight and age, whenever possible.

Parabons website claims its software is helping solve an average of one case per week, and Ellen McRae Greytak, the companys director of bioinformatics, says it has solved over 200 cases in the past seven years, though most are solved with genetic genealogy rather than composite analysis.

Greytak says the company has come under criticism for not publishing its proprietary methods and data; she attributes that to a business decision.

Parabon does not package face recognition AI with its phenotyping service, and it stipulates that its law enforcement clients should not use the images it generates from DNA samplesas an input into face recognition systems.

Parabons technology doesnt tell you the exact number of millimeters between the eyes or the ratio between the eyes, nose, and mouth, Greytak says.

Without that sort of precision, facial recognition algorithms cannot deliver accurate resultsbut deriving such precise measurements from DNA would require fundamentally new scientific discoveries, she says, and the papers that have tried to do prediction at that level have not had a lot of success.

Greytak says Parabon only predicts the general shape of someones face (though thescientific feasibility of such prediction has also been questioned).

Police have been known to run forensic sketches based on witness descriptions through facial recognition systems.

A2019 study from Georgetown Laws Center on Privacy and Technologyfound that at least half a dozen police agencies in the US permit, if not encourage using forensic sketches, either hand drawn or computer generated, as input photos for face recognition systems.

AI experts have warned that such a process likelyleads to lower levels of accuracy.

Corsight also has been criticized in the past for exaggerating the capabilities and accuracy of its face recognition system, which it calls the most ethical facial recognition system for highly challenging conditions, according to a slide deckpresentation available online.

In atechnology demo for IPVMlast November, Corsight CEO Watts said that Corsights face recognition system can identify someone with a face masknot just with a face mask, but with a ski mask.

IPVM reported that using Corsights AI on a masked face rendered a 65 per cent confidence score, Corsights own measure of how likely it is that the face captured will be matched in its database, and noted that the mask is more accurately described as a balaclava or neck gaiter, as opposed to a ski mask with only mouth and eye cutouts.

Broader issues with face recognition technologys accuracy have beenwell-documented(including byMIT Technology Review).

They are more pronounced when photographs are poorly lit or taken at extreme angles, andwhen the subjects have darker skin, are women, or are very old or very young.

Privacy advocates and the public have also criticized facial recognition technology, particularly systems likeClearview AIthat scrape social media as part of their matching engine.

Law enforcement use of the technology is particularly fraughtBoston, Minneapolis, and San Francisco are among the many cities that have banned it.

Amazon and Microsoft have stopped selling facial recognition products to police groups, and IBM has taken its face recognition software off the market.

Pseudoscience

The idea that youre going to be able to create something with the level of granularity and fidelity thats necessary to run a face match searchto me, thats preposterous, says Albert Fox Cahn, a civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, who works extensively on issues related to face recognition systems.

That is pseudoscience.

Dzemila Sero, a researcher in theComputational Imaging Groupof Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands, says the science to support such a system is not yet sufficiently developed, at least not publicly.

Sero says the catalogue of genes required to produce accurate depictions of faces from DNA samples is currently incomplete, citing Human Longevitys 2017 study.

In addition, factors like the environment and aging have substantial effects on faces that cant be captured through DNA phenotyping, and research has shown that individual genes dont affect the appearance of someones face as much as their gender and ancestry does.

Premature attempts to implement this technique would likely undermine trust and support for genomic research and garner no societal benefit, she told MIT Technology Review in an email.

Sero has studied the reverse concept of Corsights systemface to DNA rather than DNA to faceby matching a set of 3D photographs with a DNA sample.

In a paper inNature, Sero and her team reported accuracy rates between 80 per cent to 83 per cent.

Sero says her work should not be used by prosecutors as incriminating evidence, however, and that these methods also raise undeniable risks of further racial disparities in criminal justice that warrant caution against premature application of the techniques until proper safeguards are in place.

Law enforcement depends on DNA data sets, predominantly the free ancestry website GEDmatch, which was instrumental inthe search for the notorious Golden State Killer.

But even DNA sampling, once consideredthe only form of scientifically rigorous forensic evidenceby the US National Research Council, hasrecently come under criticismfor problems with accuracy.

Fox Cahn, who is currentlysuing the New York Police Departmentto obtain records related to bias in its use of facial recognition technology, says the impact of Corsights hypothetical system would be disastrous.

Gaming out the impact this is going to have, it augments every failure case for facial recognition, says Fox Cahn.

Its easy to imagine how this could be used in truly frightening and Orwellian ways.

The future of face recognition tech

Despite such concerns, the market for face recognition technology is growing, and companies are jockeying for customers.

Corsight is just one of many offering photo-matching services with flashy new features, regardless of whether theyve been shown to work.

Many of these new products look to integrate face recognition with another form of recognition.

The Russia-based facial recognition company NtechLab, for example, offers systems that identify people based on their license plates as well as facial features, and founder Artem Kuharenkotold MIT Technology Review last yearthat its algorithms try to extract as much information from the video stream as possible.

In these systems, facial recognition becomes just one part of an apparatus that can identify people by a range of techniques, fusing personal information across connected databases into a sort of data panopticon.

Corsights DNA to face system appears to be the companys foray into building a futuristic, comprehensive surveillance package it can offer to potential buyers.

But even as the market for such technologies expands, Corsight and others are at increased risk of commercialising surveillance technologies plagued by bias and inaccuracy.

*Tate Ryan-Mosley is a data and audio reporter for MIT Technology Review with a focus on the social impact of new technologies.

This article first appeared at technologyreview.com.

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Face recognition from DNA: One company's working on it - PS News

Today marks a significant milestone in the life of a woman who has been a constant in the lives of nearly everyone in the world. Queen Elizabeth becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee 70 years on the throne. As Americans, shes not our queen, but in a sense, Elizabeth II transcends national borders. She is the worlds queen, whose example these seven decades is matchless, and whose value in our turbulent times is more evident than ever.

Over the course of her reign, Queen Elizabeth has had a particularly singular relationship with the United States, having hosted and received hospitality from every U.S. president with the exception of Lyndon Johnson. Her first stateside visit occurred in 1951, before she became queen, when Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were guests at the White House of President Truman. Biden is the 13th president to have met the queen.

Naturally, she has had different chemistry with each president, and while discretion prevented it from ever being stated, it is widely believed that Ronald Reagan was her favorite. Her admiration led to his receiving an honorary knighthood in 1989. George H.W. Bush was the only other presidential knighthood recipient during her reign.

For U.S. presidents, like all world leaders, meeting the queen is perhaps the most sought-after of diplomatic receptions. Certainly this is no accident. Having met the queen in 2007 during her state visit to Washington, when I advised Congress on U.S.-U.K. affairs, I can attest that meeting her was a memorable encounter. Considering all the nations that have rolled out the red carpet for her, the queen is clearly a coveted visitor.

This is so not merely because of her unique position and title, but also because of Elizabeths personal qualities that cause many to hold her in esteem. During her years on the throne, she has consistently championed the best human virtues: faith in God, love of country, love of animals, commitment to duty. It would be difficult to find a finer living example of humanity than this British monarch.

In word and deed, the queen reminds us of what is important in life. Her words trigger a connection and emotion as when she reminded everyone during the difficult moments of the pandemic: We will meet again.

So, too, the queens integrity, discretion and lifelong commitment to her 15 Commonwealth realms are particular antidotes to the political division plaguing America and the resulting disintegration of trust in its public institutions. Britain has a head of nation who can speak with authority and trust, one who projects stability that few politicians can duplicate.

We should look to her example for living through adversity and emerging with grace. Keep calm and carry on might be her watchword. From the post-war ravages experienced by 1950s Britain through the contemporaneous tribulations of some royal family members, the queen has acted as a model of stoicism and bravery. When other public figures and celebrities collapse under pressure, she keeps her composure.

Queen Elizabeth has enjoyed remarkable longevity. In a society that is obsessed with youth, she has held the same job for 70 years and remained relevant. Politicians come and go, but she prevails. Indeed, one has the sense we almost couldnt live without her.

Yet she has not done it alone. The queen was blessed to have at her side, until his death last year, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, an indispensable partner to whom she referred as her strength and stay. She also was influenced by parents who endeared themselves to the nation during World War II, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Londoners during The Blitz, refusing to decamp to safer quarters even when Buckingham Palace was bombed.

The queens resolution to carry on, even as she has outlived her most trusted confidants, makes her all the more valuable as an example; we will all, inevitably, experience loss.

Elizabeths years on the throne are a remarkable achievement. For those of us who have never known a time before this queen, this milestone is a thought-provoking occasion for reflection not only on the past, but of the legacy of an inspiring person and its significance for the future. May God grant the queen many more, and happier, years. She certainly has earned them.

Lee Cohen, a senior fellow of the United Kingdoms Bow Group and the Bruges Group, was adviser on the U.K. to the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and founded the Congressional United Kingdom Caucus. Follow him on Twitter @LeeLeesco3.

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To the Queen, on her 70 years of inspiring the world | TheHill - The Hill

Anyone who has ever run cross country or track will fondly remember nights before a race where they stuffed their face full of carbs in order to load up before the big race. Those same people might be surprised to hear that Ancient Greek athletes, the original Olympians, never carbo-loaded. In fact, they didnt eat at all before their races. Instead, they fasted in preparation for the Olympics and other events, citing both physical and spiritual reasons.

Fasting isnt unique to the Greeks it is a huge part of human history that has been practiced throughout centuries by most ancient civilizations and religions. While many are familiar with Lent in Christianity, Ramadan in Islam and Yom Kippur in Judaism, did you know the Native Americans also practiced fasting before embarking on spiritual vision quests? Or that in pre-Columbian Peru, fasting was a requirement for penance after an individual had confessed their sin?

Beyond purely religious reasoning, people have used fasting as medical treatment for centuries. In the fifth century B.C.E., many physicians, including Hippocrates, prescribed fasts to people exhibiting symptoms of certain illnesses. This treatment continued throughout history, well into the 19th century, but fell out of popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries. It was only recently, given the scientific and medical communities research into the practice, that it has become popular once more. Now more than ever, we have the tools to explain how and why fasting can be used as a tool to achieve better health, deal with disease and increase longevity.

Personally, fasting is something that I practice everyday as a means to better physical and mental health, as well as concentration and academic performance. I have practiced fasting on some level since I was 7 years old when my Ukrainian chess coach cautioned me against eating before a game. How can the blood go to your brain when it is busy in your stomach? she would say, before instructing me not to eat two hours prior to my matches for fear that it would ruin my concentration. I cant prove that she was exactly right (although I did go on to win quite a few games and enjoy a mildly successful childhood chess career), but I can say that she was probably onto something. The current body of scientific literature widely supports both fasting and intermittent fasting as a way to improve cognitive performance.

So what does the literature say exactly? Well, a lot. For one thing, studies have proven that intermittent fasting (IF) boosts working memory in animals and verbal memory in adult humans. Mark Mattson, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins, offers a potential evolutionary explanation for this. For much of history, humans had to survive and function in a food-deprived state or they werent going to be successful in finding more food.

The human species evolved experiencing long periods between kills where we had to be able to function without the consistent supply of food that we are surrounded by today, so its not entirely surprising that our brains and bodies are accustomed to this.

One clinical study even went as far as to show that one week of fasting can improve peoples sleep, concentration and emotional balance, suggesting that not only can we survive without food but perhaps even thrive in its absence. The benefits dont stop there. Fasting, both IF and alternate-day, have been linked to increased brain cell generation, a multitude of cognitive and psychological benefits, resilience to neurological conditions, and slower aging effects. This research is especially exciting as we look toward the future of disease prevention and anti-aging science.

In addition to the many cognitive benefits, fasting has been shown to improve a multitude of other bodily functions and help against disease. For example, IF can help decrease blood sugar levels to help reduce insulin resistance, decrease certain inflammatory markers (which improves overall health), and enhance heart health by improving blood pressure and triglycerides and cholesterol levels. It can also mitigate and prevent neurodegenerative disorders, boost immunity, improve gut health, delay aging, and aid in cancer prevention as well as increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

Of course, not everyone should engage in this practicespecifically, children and teens under 18, pregnant women, people with diabetes or blood sugar problems, and those with a history of eating disorders. But, for the most part, this is a universally healthy practice. Valter Longo, a professor of biological sciences and gerontology at the University of Southern California, explains that The longer you fast, the more you basically kill cells. That sounds like a bad thing, but the cells that die are unhealthy ones. The benefits of fasting are not limited to people who are overweight, predisposed to neurodegenerative disorder, or even looking to improve their cognitive functioninggiven the current science, it appears to be something that could benefit all people.

IF has slowly manifested itself into an everyday practice for me, and for the past few years, I have practiced it religiously. I only eat within an eight hour period, usually 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., which might sound difficult if youve never tried it before, but I promise that it doesnt take long for your body to acclimate and make it habitual. If youre struggling with concentration, feeling sluggish, want to avoid disease, or just generally want to live a longer life, the science says that it is worth a tryand I agree!

Featured Graphic by Liz Schwab/HeightsEditor

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Try Fasting this February - The Heights - The Heights