Category Archives: Human Longevity

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

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Rfrences

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[2] Pter Bai and Carles Cant, The Role of PARP-1 and PARP-2 Enzymes in Metabolic Regulation and Disease, Cell Metabolism 16, no. 3 (September 5, 2012): 29095, doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2012.06.016.

[2] Nady Braidy et al., Age Related Changes in NAD+ Metabolism Oxidative Stress and Sirt1 Activity in Wistar Rats, PLOS ONE 6, no. 4 (avr 2011): e19194, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019194.

[3] Weihai Ying et al., NAD+ as a Metabolic Link between DNA Damage and Cell Death, Journal of Neuroscience Research 79, no. 12 (January 1, 2005): 21623, doi:10.1002/jnr.20289.

[4] Judith Campisi, Senescent Cells, Tumor Suppression, and Organismal Aging: Good Citizens, Bad Neighbors, Cell 120, no. 4 (February 25, 2005): 51322, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2005.02.003.

[5] Braidy et al., Age Related Changes in NAD+ Metabolism Oxidative Stress and Sirt1 Activity in Wistar Rats.

[6] Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W. Szostak, Telomeres and Telomerase: The Path from Maize, Tetrahymena and Yeast to Human Cancer and Aging, Nature Medicine 12, no. 10 (October 2006): 113338, doi:10.1038/nm1006-1133.

[7] Jerry W. Shay and Woodring E. Wright, Senescence and Immortalization: Role of Telomeres and Telomerase, Carcinogenesis 26, no. 5 (May 1, 2005): 86774, doi:10.1093/carcin/bgh296.

[8] Mary Armanios and Elizabeth H. Blackburn, The Telomere Syndromes, Nature Reviews. Genetics 13, no. 10 (October 2012): 693704, doi:10.1038/nrg3246.

[9] Partial Reversal of Aging Achieved in Mice, Harvard Gazette, accessed September 2, 2016, http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/partial-reversal-of-aging-achieved-in-mice/.

[9] S. Sayols-Baixeras et al., Identification and Validation of Seven New Loci Showing Differential DNA Methylation Related to Serum Lipid Profile: An Epigenome-Wide Approach. The REGICOR Study, Human Molecular Genetics, September 15, 2016, doi:10.1093/hmg/ddw285.

[10] Gianluca Pegoraro et al., Aging-Related Chromatin Defects via Loss of the NURD Complex, Nature Cell Biology 11, no. 10 (October 2009): 126167, doi:10.1038/ncb1971.

[11] Chunyu Jin et al., Histone Demethylase UTX-1 Regulates C. Elegans Life Span by Targeting the insulin/IGF-1 Signaling Pathway, Cell Metabolism 14, no. 2 (August 3, 2011): 16172, doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2011.07.001.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Susmita Kaushik and Ana Maria Cuervo, Proteostasis and Aging, Nature Medicine 21, no. 12 (December 2015): 140615, doi:10.1038/nm.4001.

[14] D. E. Feldman and J. Frydman, Protein Folding in Vivo: The Importance of Molecular Chaperones, Current Opinion in Structural Biology 10, no. 1 (February 2000): 2633.

[15] Stuart K. Calderwood, Ayesha Murshid, and Thomas Prince, The Shock of Aging: Molecular Chaperones and the Heat Shock Response in Longevity and Aging A Mini-Review, Gerontology 55, no. 5 (September 2009): 55058, doi:10.1159/000225957.

[16] Protein Modification and Maintenance Systems as Biomarkers of Ageing, n.d.

[17] Ryan Doonan et al., Against the Oxidative Damage Theory of Aging: Superoxide Dismutases Protect against Oxidative Stress but Have Little or No Effect on Life Span in Caenorhabditis Elegans, Genes & Development 22, no. 23 (December 1, 2008): 323641, doi:10.1101/gad.504808.

[18] Ana Mesquita et al., Caloric Restriction or Catalase Inactivation Extends Yeast Chronological Lifespan by Inducing H2O2 and Superoxide Dismutase Activity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107, no. 34 (August 24, 2010): 1512328, doi:10.1073/pnas.1004432107.

[19] Michael T. Ryan and Nicholas J. Hoogenraad, Mitochondrial-Nuclear Communications, Annual Review of Biochemistry 76 (2007): 70122, doi:10.1146/annurev.biochem.76.052305.091720.

[20] Tamara Tchkonia et al., Cellular Senescence and the Senescent Secretory Phenotype: Therapeutic Opportunities, Journal of Clinical Investigation 123, no. 3 (March 1, 2013): 96672, doi:10.1172/JCI64098.

[21] Chunfang Wang et al., DNA Damage Response and Cellular Senescence in Tissues of Aging Mice, Aging Cell 8, no. 3 (June 2009): 31123, doi:10.1111/j.1474-9726.2009.00481.x.

[22] Isabel Beerman et al., Proliferation-Dependent Alterations of the DNA Methylation Landscape Underlie Hematopoietic Stem Cell Aging, Cell Stem Cell 12, no. 4 (April 4, 2013): 41325, doi:10.1016/j.stem.2013.01.017.

[23] Claudia E. Rbe et al., Accumulation of DNA Damage in Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells during Human Aging, PLoS ONE 6, no. 3 (March 7, 2011), doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017487.

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Aging 101: Biological causes of aging - Work for human ...

Social isolation and loneliness were independently associated with a higher risk of incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a recent study of older women in the United States, suggesting the need for increased prevention in this cohort.

The study data show an 11.0% - 16.0% higher risk of CVD among postmenopausal women, while higher levels of social isolation and loneliness were associated with a 13.0% - 27.0% higher risk of CVD

Led by study authors Natalie M. Golaszewski, PhD and John Bellettiere, PhD, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science, University of California, San Diego, the study hypothesized fewer associations with risk of CVD would be found among women with greater social support.

The prospective cohort study was conducted from March 2011 - March 2019 and included women (65 - 69 years old) from the Womens Health Initiative Extension Study with no history of myocardial infarction, stroke, or coronary heart disease.

To obtain this population, investigators found two sets of data:

After exclusion of the latter group, 57,825 (94.5%) women were left for follow-up until the end of the study period of the first reported major CVD event.

Main outcomes were considered major CVD and the first reported occurrence of the event was physician adjudicated using medical records. Both social isolation and loneliness were evaluated utilizing validated questionnaires, including the UCLA Loneliness scale, while social support was assessed using 9 items from the 19-item Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Survey.

Additionally, hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs for CVD were calculated for women with high social isolation and loneliness scores, compared lower scores using multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models.

In the total cohort (n = 57,825), the mean age was 79.0 years and 89.1% identified as non-HIspanic White. A higher percentage of participants with above-median social isolation and loneliness had depression and diabetes and more likely report poorer self-rated health and less social support.

A total of 1599 major CVD events occurred over 186,762 person-years. Rates of CVD events among women with above-median loneliness was 11.5 per 1000 person-years and 7.4 per 1000 person-years among women with below-median loneliness.

Investigators observed the HR for the association of high versus low social isolation scores with incident CVD was 1.18 (95% CI, 1.13 - 1.23; 18.0% higher risk) and the HR for the association of high versus low loneliness scores with CVD was 1.14 (95% CI, 1.10 - 1.18).

Following additional adjustment for health behaviors and health status, the HR was 1.08 (95% CI, 1.03 - 1.12; 8.0% higher risk) for social isolation and 1.05 (95% CI, 1.01 - 1.09; 5.0% higher risk) for loneliness.

Then, the HRs for the association of both high social isolation scores and high loneliness scores versus both low social isolation scores and low loneliness scores were 1.27 (95% CI, 1.21 - 1.36; 27.0% higher risk) and 1.13 (95% CI, 1.06 - 1.20; 13.0% higher risk), after adjustment.

Lastly, social support was not found to be a significant effect modifier of the associations (social isolation x social support: r, -0.18; P = .86; loneliness x social support: r, 0.78; P = .48).

The mechanisms through which social isolation and loneliness are associated with incident CVD may partially involve health behaviors and changing health status, although in this study, the results suggest that the associations were not fully explained by these factors, investigators concluded.

The study, Evaluation of Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Cardiovascular Disease Among Older Women in the US, was published in JAMA Network Open.

Excerpt from:
Higher Risk of Incident CVD in Older Women Linked to Social Isolation, Loneliness - MD Magazine

Medical educators and the bodies that oversee medical schools have long been unenthused by publications that purport to rank the quality of medical schools. A recent shift in those rankings may be a step in the right direction, according to a Viewpoint column published in JAMA Health Forum, but theres still much work to be done.

Heres a look at why the contention that medical school rankings remain a beauty contest has some merit and why medical students advise pre-meds to look beyond the best-of lists to find the right fit.

Reputation still overweighted

The Viewpoint column, Increasing Transparency for Medical School Primary Care RankingsMoving From a Beauty Contest to a Talent Show, was written by Robert L.PhillipsJr,MD, MSPH,Andrew W.Bazemore,MD, MPH,and John M.Westfall,MD, MPH, who are affiliated with the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) and other organizations that promote primary care.

In the column, the authors noted how the well-known U.S. News & World Report rankings have evolved with regard to primary care.

The new overall Best Medical Schools for Primary Care rankings were modified in 2021 such that 30% of the score is now based on graduates practicing primary care after their residency training rather than those entering primary care training. Initial residency comprises 10% of the score, which still overestimates primary care, but this measure has been reduced from its previous weighting of 30%, the commentarys authors wrote. The remaining score (60%) is still largely based on reputation.

The reputation metric having such weight in the case study left schools that produce the most primary care physiciansbut may not have the name recognitionout of the rankings.

Learn more about why when it comes to the best medical schools, fit is more important than rankings.

Rankings are self-perpetuating

Nearly 80% of respondents to the 2020 matriculating medical student questionnaire, conducted by the Association of American Medical Colleges, stated that the general reputation of a medical school was an important or very important factor when selecting a medical school.

As highlighted in past critiques, the rankings themselves can be a flattering piece of marketing. A September 2019 commentary in the journal Academic Medicinecited in the JAMA Health Forum Viewpoint columncalled on several more important selection criteria that students should consider.

Quality education, community service, professional diversity, research excellence, health advocacy, interprofessional care, fostering of student resiliency and well-being, and other outcomes are better metrics of medical school quality than the currently flawed rankings, the authors wrote at the time.

The JAMA Health Forum commentarys lead author, Dr. Phillips, cautioned any use of rankings as a primary evaluation metric for selecting a medical school.

Students should be careful in using medical school rankings to inform their choices as many rankings are opinion-driven, said Dr. Phillips, who directs the Center for Professionalism and Value in Health Care at the American Board of Family Medicine Foundation.

He said the more data-driven U.S News rankings, developed with data from the Robert Graham Center, does offer pre-meds a better tool to consider as they decide where to apply or enroll.

We also hope that the new ranking heralds continued improvement of the information that help students make career decisions, Dr. Phillips said.

Importantly, the revised rankings add four new data-driven measures to account for student diversity, the proportion of graduates who practice in primary care, and those who practice in rural or medically underserved areas. What matters most, however, is going to be up the individual medical school applicant.

What really matters

Alec Calac is an AMA member and MD-PhD student at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. As a pre-med, he felt that personal interactions were far more important.

Rankings really did not matter to me, Calac said. I wanted to train somewhere that valued not just what I had done, but who I was.

I knew that I would receive a great education wherever I went. But at the end of the day, it was not about rankings. It was about the interactions that I had with students, staff and faculty of color during revisit programs, added Calac, of the Pauma Band of Luiseo Indians.

Check out these four tips for choosing the right medical school.

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Why pre-meds should think twice about medical school rankings - American Medical Association

Biohacking is, in a way, lifehackings bizarro-world twin. (Bio means life, after all.) Lifehacking isnt an organized movement or even really a word, never mind the name of the website youre reading right now; biohacking has cult status and people will identify themselves as followers of the practice. Lifehacking is just part of, you know, life; biohacking has its gurus and buzzwords.

But what is biohacking when you get down to it? The answer will depend on who you ask. There are grinders who implant devices under their skin; and then there are tech bros who will skip breakfast or take a cold shower and call it a biohack.

In the broadest sense, biohacking is any practice that changes the structure or function of the body. I once went to an anarchist-flavored biohacking conference where strength training and birth control were each brought up multiple times as examples of effective, well-accepted biohacks. (Much more out-there stuff was discussed, but these provided common ground everyone could agree on.)

When you look at it that way, almost anything can be a biohack. But that also means a lot of the trendier biohacks are simply new, unproven, potential solutions for problems that already have solutions.

Scrolling through biohacking forums or reading the blogs of prominent biohackers will reveal the problems theyre trying to solve are familiar ones. Biohackers want to get more sleep; reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes; focus better at work or while pursuing their hobbies; lose weight; and prevent or manage mental health issues like depression. Biohackers: Theyre just like us!

In the same sense that alternative medicine that works just becomes medicine, biohacks that actually work become, well, just stuff we do. So how do the trendy kind of biohacks stack up against more boring, established alternative practices?

Longevity is one of the biggest buzzwords in biohacking right now, and yet it all feels very off-the-mark to me. Much of the chatter is based on mouse studies and blood-based biomarkers, and the associated hacks include things like fasting and cold exposure.

I actually visited one of the blue zones famed for their populations of 100-year-old residents (Nicoya, Costa Rica, where centenarians arent common, but are less rare than in other parts of the world). The biggest thing I took away from that experience is that if you want to live a long time, it really helps to live in a place with near-universal healthcare that does a lot of outreach to older and rural populations.

You cant biohack your way into being born in 1920s Costa Rica. But people who idolize the blue zones end up hypothesizing that maybe its this about the food, or this about the water, or that about the type of exercise people get while doing farm work. (Fun fact: lard and fruit juice both figure heavily into the traditional diet; good luck getting any biohacker on board with both of those.) In truth, maybe its a combination of genetics and culture, and perhaps even a few-decades-long statistical luck of the draw.

In short, its impossible to thoroughly study human longevity in timeframes that are less than a human lifespan. What pass for longevity biohacks tend to be based on wishful thinking and a fear of disability or of growing old enough to get (gasp) wrinkles. And they mostly amount to confirmation bias: Whatever makes you healthier should help you live longer, right? So whatever you have already decided is a healthy habit (or biohack), thats what youll tell your biohacking buddies is a pathway to longevity.

Keto (low carb) diets and intermittent fasting are two dietary strategies most often used to lose weight, although sometimes the stated goal is to give you more energy or to promote health and boost longevity.

Both of these strategies can help a person to lose weight or to become healthier, sure, but not because either is a cheat code. For a while there was a hypothesis that putting your body into a state of ketosis from eating very little sugar or starch would change how hungry you feel, and thus how much fat you store. It was an interesting hypothesis, but research has repeatedly failed to find any such effect. (Take this recent study, for example.)

Intermittent fasting is in a similar place. Its definitely one of many effective strategies one can use when dieting. If you want to bring your weight down a few pounds, you might rather have no breakfast and a big lunch, than a small breakfast and a small lunch. But is the practice worthwhile? If you enjoy it, sure. But there isnt any compelling evidence a person who fasts frequently is going to be healthier in the long run than a person who eats a healthy diet at normal mealtimes.

Once again, were back to the reality that there is no best diet, but a broad set of principles (get some protein, eat your vegetables, create a calorie deficit if youre trying to lose weight) that you dont need special hacks to live by.

Biohackers love to talk about their mental state. Does this or that supplement help you focus? How can you be best primed to pay attention and learn things more quickly and understand them more deeply?

In a sense, self-experimentation on a subjective mental benefit is easy. Do the thing, and see if you feel more focused. But on the other hand, subjective mental outcomes are the most susceptible to the placebo effect. Maybe youre focusing better because you feel like youve created the optimal environment for you to focus better, and that in itself lets you focus better. One study on microdosing found results consistent with the idea that this may, in fact, be exactly whats happening.

Various drugs, supplements, and techniques (like taking a cold shower before you study) might help us focus. But I think its important to consider who has already asked this question, without calling it biohacking? In this case: students. How do you study more effectively?

Well, caffeine can definitely help. (Research shows the stimulant does seem to help you focus, even aside from its benefit in keeping you awake during your study session.) Creating an environment where you wont be distracted or disturbed can also be helpful. I can even look around me now, as Im writing this, to see a number of things I could rebrand as biohacks: Ive got a caffeinated beverage, noise-canceling headphones, and an exercise bike (since my workday goes better when I get exercise in the morning, even if only a few minutes). Theres also the notebook thats always within reach, since I find pen and paper brainstorming and to-do lists more effective than their digital counterparts.

Focus biohacks blur pretty seamlessly into study tips. Remember that, or else youll end up like the aspiring pianist who showed up on the biohackers Reddit looking for focus hacks while dismissing the idea that they should perhaps be asking piano Reddit about the best ways to practice.

Sleep is important, and we all need to get enough of it. Sleep-related biohacks are some of the most talked about (probably second only to those concerning diet) because sleep effects so many areas of our lives. If you dont get adequate sleep, youll be tiredmaking sleep also a biohack for focus.

But there arent really any shortcuts to getting enough sleep save for...getting enough sleep. Years ago there was an idea that you might be able to take six small naps a day and never need spend a whole night asleep; none of the people who sung its praises managed to stick with it, strongly suggesting that it was not, in fact, a sustainable alternative.

The rest of the sleep hacks tend to fall into two categories: youre either re-discovering ordinary sleep hygiene stuff (making your sleeping area a cool, dark, quiet place and getting to it on time each night), or youre obsessing over sleep stages and body functions detected by a smartwatch or a gadget like an Oura ring.

As much as I eschew most of the trendy biohacks, I do wear an Oura ring. I use it for two things: noticing how many hours I was in bed, and making sure my resting heart rate drops down to its usual baseline when I take a rest day from exercise. What I dont do is pay one iota of attention to how much REM or deep sleep it thinks Im getting, or scour biohacking websites for ways to improve my heart rate variability.

Even the best consumer gadgets just arent great at differentiating one sleep stage from another (my ring rarely credits me with more than an hour of REM sleep in a given night) and obsessing over whether youve got a good HRV score is not a worthwhile hobby. Do you feel well-rested? Have you been under a lot of mental or physical stress lately? You can answer those questions on your own. A sleep tracker just gives you a more precise way to say Im tired.

I feel the same way about biohacking as I do about gamifying health and fitness. You have to look at your real problems or goals, and decide on real solutions, instead of getting distracted with metrics or tweaks that ultimately dont make a difference. For any goal with broad appeal, others have been in the field finding solutions for far longer than anybody who has been calling it biohacking. Want to prevent cancer, for example? The American Cancer Society has plenty of tips for you.

The biohackers who show up on forums asking how to increase muscle protein synthesis (or even the grinder who tried to genetically engineer his own arm muscles) would be better served by consistently lifting some heavy shit. People have built huge muscles with nothing but weight training and a high protein intake. Those who do this, have great genetics, and also take steroids have built even bigger ones.

Steroids are a biohack by any definition, but their dangers and side effects are well-known. Part of the thrill of being into biohacking is that youre constantly digging up new ideas whose potential effectiveness is as big as your imagination, and whose downsides are not yet known. Reality is a lot more disappointing.

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What Is Biohacking, and Is Any of It Not Stupid? - Lifehacker

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has a devastating trajectory, first manifesting as muscle weakness and slurred speech. From there, it steals progressively more motor function until sufferers are no longer able to breathe on their own. There is no cure, and treatments can only prolong the inevitable by months, at most.

Most patients die within two to five years, although there are exceptions: theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously lived more than 50 years with the disease. Another striking case: The Indigenous population of Guam in the years after World War II, which developed ALS in very high numbers for unknown reasons.

Unlike typical ALS patients, many Guamanians with the disease lived a long time without medical intervention 20 years or more. Reports indicate the more severe the symptoms at onset in the Guamanians, the longer they lived the opposite of modern patients.

Risana Chowdhury, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, is looking to discover why.

Risana Chowdhury, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, conducts an immune-assay to determine the levels of c-reactive protein in the sera of Guamanian ALS patients and matched controls. Image Credit: Provided photo.To that end, she is looking at a panel of immunoregulators in human serum from Guam that is part of Binghamton Universitys biospecimen archive, under the direction of Chowdurys mentor, Professor Ralph Garruto. Her focus is on c-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of inflammation produced by the liver, and cytokines, which regulate immune function. As with most diseases, elevated levels of inflammation are part of ALS.

I am interested in how serum inflammation may have been different in Guamanian ALS patients compared to modern ALS patients, and how these differences may have influenced the unusually long lifespan seen in some cases of Guamanian ALS, she said.

Born in Bangladesh, Chowdhury moved to the United States at the age of five; she grew up mostly in Missouri. Originally contemplating a career in dentistry, she came to Binghamton with her husband a resident in internal medicine at the time and decided to pursue a masters degree in biomedical anthropology. The field proved so interesting that she shifted gears during her masters program and decided to become an anthropologist herself.

I think biological anthropology is fascinating because it is the study of humans interacting with their environments. It observes how one affects the other and how human behaviors, on both individual and community levels, affect health outcomes, she said.

She completed her MS in 2009 and enrolled in the MA/PhD program in 2015, completing her MA in 2018. Life has been busy in other ways, too; she had three children during the course of her studies at Binghamton.

She has found the University to be a welcoming and supportive environment, from her professors and department staff to the undergraduate students who have assisted her research through the years; many of the latter have gone on to their own graduate programs or to medical school. Chowdhurys research also received a boost from internal grants, including one from Harpur Edge.

My female and BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) professors have also inspired me. I know it sounds clich, but representation matters! she said.

Her advisor, Associate Professor Katherine Wander, helped Chowdhury formulate hypotheses for the project. The central premise is this: Because humans have co-evolved with parasites and infectious diseases, our ancestors immune systems learned to self-regulate based on these interactions. Intestinal parasites, for example, down-regulate the hosts immune response in order to survive. Higher-income countries have significantly reduced childhood exposure to such pathogens, which can result in a hyperactive immune system in turn leading to an increased risk for developing allergies and autoimmune diseases later in life.

ALS emergence on Guam is a mystery; when the Spanish ruled the island from the mid-1500s to 1898, they made no note of it. The incidence of ALS has also decreased since the modernization of the Pacific Island, with the last remaining cases affecting between 10 and 25 individuals occurring between 1980 and 1991.

Risana Chowdhury, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, explains one of the three pilot studies she conducted to ensure the integrity and reliability of her data. Image Credit: Provided photo.According to reports, the environment of post-World War II Guam was higher in parasitic and other infectious diseases. My question is: Did Guamanians with ALS live longer because their exposure to a higher-infectious disease environment made their immune systems stronger? Chowdhury said. Studying patterns of inflammation in Guamanian sera of ALS cases and non-cases may help us answer that question.

So far, she has uncovered surprising patterns in the data that support the findings of researchers from the 1950s, although its too early to come to meaningful conclusions.

In the Guamanian ALS cases, elevated serum levels of some pro-inflammatory cytokines appear to be associated with longer lifespan. This is different from modern ALS cases, where higher serum inflammation is associated with shorter lifespan, she said.

Chowdhury is currently in the process of writing her dissertation, which she plans to defend in May 2022. She hopes to continue teaching or conducting research in the field.

Weve lost several giants in anthropology these last few years, including our own Professor Gary James in 2020 and well as E.O. Wilson and Richard Leakey more recently. Those are enormous shoes to fill, but it would be incredible to carry on their legacy, while taking anthropology to broader and more inclusive horizons, she said.

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Research explores longevity and ALS | Binghamton News - Binghamton University

BATON ROUGE An LSU chemist and her research team have discovered a promising new treatment for an aggressive form of breast cancer with limited treatment options called triple-negative breast cancer, or TNBC. Compared to other types of breast cancer, TNBC has a shorter overall survival rate, and is more common in women of color and women under the age of 40.

TNBC cells do not have the receptors commonly found in other forms of breast cancer, which can complicate treatment. Currently, TNBC treatment involves multimodality therapies, including surgery, radiation and non-targeted chemotherapy. However, non-selective chemotherapy can be problematic for patients.

Non-selective chemotherapy treatments cant differentiate between cancer and non-cancerous tissue, resulting in harm to both cancer and non-cancerous, healthy cells, said LSU Chemistry Assistant Professor Fatima Rivas. Thus, there is a critical need to discover effective drug therapies that target TNBC cells without harming normal cells.

The Rivas research group is studying potential effective therapies using natural products to selectively target tumor cells and reduce mortality rates associated with TNBC.

Rivas and her collaborator,Associate Professor Michelle M. Martnez Montemayorfrom the Universidad Central del Caribe School of Medicine, identified ergosterol peroxide, a natural product from Ganoderma lucidum mushrooms, and developed Erperox. The mushroom-derived compound targets TNBC models without inducing cytotoxicity to normal tissue.

A Canadian company,Revive Therapeutics, recently licensed Erperox, which had been previously patented, and will fund preclinical efforts on determining the mode of action of Erperox and in vivo efficacy and safety studies. The teams goal is to advance this compound to preclinical candidate status so they can clear the path toward future clinical use for TNBC.

Natural products and their structural analogues have historically made a major contribution to the development of therapeutics, especially for cancer and infectious diseases, Rivas said. We believe that current scientific and technological advances will continue to facilitate the use of natural product-based drug discovery across the United States to improve human health and longevity.

According to Rivas, nearly half of patients in the U.S. with cancer reported that they began taking dietary supplements after receiving a diagnosis of cancer. The team hopes that their current in vitro and in vivo data will provide science-based evidence on the potential of Erperox.

The research team also received funding from Columbia Universitys Translational Therapeutics Accelerator, Puerto Rican Trust and the National Institutes of Health IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence program. These sponsored funds will assist the team in expanding their knowledge of drug dosing, potential synergies with current chemotherapeutics and potential toxicity effects.

Rivas joined the faculty at LSU in 2020. Her groups research focuses on synthesizing complex natural products as molecular probes to investigate cellular metabolic processes that drive human disease and develop chemical tools that can be utilized for treatment.

For additional information about Rivas research, please visit the Rivas research groupwebpage.

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LSU Chemist and Collaborator Discover a Natural-based Therapy to Treat an Aggressive form of Breast Cancer - L'Observateur - L'Observateur