To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser.
With an accout for my.bionity.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter.
- My watch list
- My saved searches
- My saved topics
- My newsletter
James D. Watson
James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Additional recommended knowledge
Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 6 1928, the son of a businessman, also named James Dewey Watson and Margaret Jean Mitchell . His father was of midwestern English descent. His mother's father Lauchlin Mitchell, a tailor, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and her mother, Lizzie Gleason, was the child of Irish parents from Tipperary. Watson was fascinated with bird watching, a hobby he shared with his father. At the age of 12, Watson starred on Quiz Kids, a popular radio show that challenged precocious youngsters to answer questions. Thanks to the liberal policy of University president Robert Hutchins, he enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of 15. After reading Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life? in 1946, Watson changed his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to genetics. He earned his B.S. in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1947. In his autobiography, Avoid Boring People, Watson describes the University of Chicago as an idyllic academic institution where he was instilled with the capacity for critical thought and an ethical compulsion not to suffer fools who impeded his search for truth, in contrast to his description of his later work at Harvard University.
He was attracted to the work of Salvador Luria. Luria eventually shared a Nobel Prize for his work on the Luria-Delbrück experiment, which concerned the nature of genetic mutations. Luria was part of a distributed group of researchers who were making use of the viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages. Luria and Max Delbrück were among the leaders of this new "Phage Group", an important movement of geneticists from experimental systems such as Drosophila towards microbial genetics. Early in 1948 Watson began his Ph.D. research in Luria's laboratory at Indiana University and that spring he got to meet Delbrück in Luria's apartment and again that summer during Watson's first trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). The Phage Group was the intellectual medium within which Watson became a working scientist. Importantly, the members of the Phage Group had a sense that they were on the path to discovering the physical nature of the gene. In 1949 Watson took a course with Felix Haurowitz that included the conventional view of that time: that proteins were genes and able to replicate themselves. The other major molecular component of chromosomes, DNA, was thought by many to be a "stupid tetranucleotide", serving only a structural role to support the proteins. However, even at this early time, Watson, under the influence of the Phage Group, was aware of the work of Oswald Avery which suggested that DNA was the genetic molecule. Watson's research project involved using X-rays to inactivate bacterial viruses ("phage"). He gained his Ph.D. in Zoology at Indiana University in 1950.
Watson then went to Copenhagen in September 1950 for a year of postdoctoral research, first heading to the laboratory of biochemist Herman Kalckar. Kalckar was interested in the enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids, and wanted to use phage as an experimental system. Watson, however, wanted to explore the structure of DNA, and his interests did not coincide with Kalckar's. After working part of the year with Kalcker, Watson spent the remainder of his time in Copenhagen conducting experiments with microbial physiologist Ole Maaloe, then a member of the Phage Group. The experiments, which Watson had learned of during the previous summer's Cold Spring Harbor phage conference, included the use of radioactive phosphate as a tracer to determine which molecular components of phage particles actually infect the target bacteria during viral infection. The intention was to determine whether protein or DNA was the genetic material, but upon consultation with Max Delbrück, they determined that their results were inconclusive and could not specifically identify the newly labeled molecules as DNA. Watson never developed a constructive interaction with Kalckar, but he did accompany Kalckar to a meeting in Italy where Watson saw Maurice Wilkins talk about his X-ray diffraction data for DNA. Watson was now certain that DNA had a definite molecular structure that could be solved.
In 1951 the chemist Linus Pauling published his model of the protein alpha helix, a result that grew out of Pauling's relentless efforts in X-ray crystallography and molecular model building. After obtaining some results from his phage and other experimental research conducted at Indiana University, Statens seruminstitute (Denmark), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the California Institute of Technology, Watson now had the desire to learn to perform X-ray diffraction experiments so that he could work to determine the structure of DNA. That summer, Luria met John Kendrew and arranged for a new postdoctoral research project for Watson in England.
In 1968, Watson married Elizabeth Lewis and became the Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Between 1970 and 1972 Watson's two sons were born and by 1974 the young family made CSHL their permanent residence.
Structure of DNA
In late 1951 Crick and Watson began a series of informal exchanges with Maurice Wilkins during which some of Rosalind Franklin's findings were given to Watson and Crick by Wilkins without Franklin's permission or knowledge. In November, Watson attended a seminar by Franklin. She spoke about the X-ray diffraction data she had collected with Raymond Gosling. The data indicated that DNA was a helix of some sort. Soon after this seminar, Watson and Crick constructed an incorrect molecular model of DNA in which the phosphate backbones were on the inside of the structure. Franklin asserted that the phosphates almost certainly were on the outside, not the inside. Watson and Crick eventually came to see that she was right and used this information in their final determination of the helical structure. In 1952, the final details of the chemical structure of the DNA backbone were determined by biochemists like Alexander Todd.
During 1952, Crick and Watson had been asked not to work on making molecular models of the structure of DNA. Instead, Watson's official assignment was to perform X-ray diffraction experiments on tobacco mosaic virus. Tobacco mosaic virus was the first virus to be identified (1886) and purified (1935). Since electron microscopy revealed that virus crystals form inside infected plants, it made sense to isolate this virus for study by X-ray crystallography. Early X-ray diffraction images for tobacco mosaic virus had been collected before World War II. By 1954, Watson had deduced from his X-ray diffraction images that the tobacco mosaic virus had a helical structure. Despite his official assignment, the lure of solving the puzzle of DNA structure continued to tantalize Watson; with his friend Crick, he continued to think about how to determine the structure of DNA.
In April 1952, Watson's PhD research adviser, Luria, was to speak at a meeting in England. However, Luria was not allowed to travel due to cold war fears over his Marxist leanings. Watson used Luria's speaking slot to talk about his own work with radioactive DNA and the results of others in the Phage Group that indicated the genetic material of phages was DNA. It has been recorded that during this meeting Watson was discussing with others prior discoveries by other researchers such as the calculated width of the B-form DNA molecule as determined by X-ray diffraction studies. By 1952 estimates from X-ray data and electron microscopy agreed that the diameter of DNA was about 2 nanometers.
Watson and Crick benefited from two travel-related strokes of luck in 1952. First, Erwin Chargaff visited England in 1952 and inspired Watson and Crick to learn more about nucleotide biochemistry. There are four nucleobases: guanine (G), cytosine (C), adenine (A) and thymine (T) in DNA. The so-called Chargaff ratios experimental results indicated that the amount of G is equal to C and the amount of A is equal to T. Jerry Donohue explained to Watson and Crick the correct structures of the four bases. The second travel-related event was that Linus Pauling's plans to visit England were disrupted. His planned visit was canceled for political reasons and he never gained access to the King's College X-ray diffraction data for DNA until it was published in 1953.
In 1953, Crick and Watson were given permission by their lab director and Wilkins to again try to make a structural model of DNA. At this time, Crick and Watson became aware of a research progress report containing some of Franklin's findings. This report contained the data that she had previously discussed in her research seminar of November 1951. Crick and Watson continued to make use of Franklin's results in their thinking about the structure of DNA.
Watson's key contribution was in discovering the nucleotide base pairs, the key to the structure and function of DNA. This key discovery was made in the Pauling "tradition", by playing with molecular models. Since he would have to wait for the Cavendish machine shop to make tin models of the four nucleobases, Watson, on February 21, 1953 made a molecule model of each using a straight edge, an exacto knife, white cardboard and paste. These molecules are all flat in their ring structures, so Watson could slide the cardboard models around on a table and examine how they might interact and fit together. After looking at the possible arrangements of his cardboard molecule models, Watson soon realized that the larger two-ring A and G nucleobases (technically referred to as purines) could be paired with the smaller one-ring T and C nucleobases, known as pyrimidines. Watson examined the possibility of hydrogen bonds between the pairs of purines and pyrimidines. After moving the A and T molecules around on the table he sat at, he brought together the distal (relative to its five-member ring) nitrogen of the A and the correct nitrogen-based hydrogen of T. Fortunately, the A and T were lying on the table both "face up" in that they were in the orientation as they occur in DNA and Watson then noticed the possibility of the second hydrogen bond involving an oxygen atom. He quickly saw that the other pair, C's nitrogen and G's nitrogen-based hydrogen had a similar relationship and that those two molecules formed three such bonds. As the accompanying diagram indicates, all five hydrogens involved have a covalent bond to a nitrogen (which has no "double" bond) and form the weaker hydrogen bond with either a nitrogen or an oxygen that each have one double valence bond to a carbon atom.
Watson then saw that the two pairs could be superimposed on each other with similar overall structure. In particular, the hexagonal rings were equidistant and the relative orientations of the five-member rings of the "big" molecules, A and G were the same. The nitrogens with the "squiggly" lines are the ones that attach, as "ladder rungs", to the helical backbone and that these nitrogen atoms are equidistant and also superimpose in the two pairs, allowing the helical structure to be smooth. Watson sensed that too many pieces were falling into place for this to be anything but the answer. He was correct. The base pairs discovered by Watson were consistent with the biochemical data Chargaff had already published.
Watson and Crick proceeded to deduce the double helix structure of DNA which they submitted to the journal Nature and was subsequently published on April 25 1953. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their research on the structure of nucleic acids. Some regret that Franklin did not live long enough to share in the Nobel Prize. Watson mentions in his autobiography, Avoid Boring People, that he was refused a $1,000 raise in salary after winning the Nobel.
The Double Helix
In 1968 Watson wrote The Double Helix, one of the Modern Library's 100 best non-fiction books. The account is the sometimes painful story of not only the discovery of the structure of DNA, but the personalities, conflicts and controversy surrounding their work.
Controversy attended the publication of the book. Harvard professor Richard Lewontin wrote that the book had "debased the currency of his [Watson's] own life", and molecular biologist Robert L. Sinsheimer described Watson's portrayal of science as a "clawing climb up a slippery slope, impeded by the authority of fools, to be made with cadged data ... with malice toward most, and charity toward none."  It was originally to be published by Harvard University Press, but after objections from both Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, among others, Watson's home university where he had been a member of the biology faculty since 1955, dropped the book and it was instead published by a commercial publisher, an incident which caused some scandal. Watson's original title was to have been "Honest Jim," in part to raise the ethical questions of bypassing Franklin to gain access to her X-ray diffraction data before they were published. Watson seems to have never been particularly bothered by the way things turned out. If all that mattered was beating Pauling to the structure of DNA, then Franklin's cautious approach to analysis of the X-ray data was simply an obstacle that Watson needed to run around. Wilkins and others were there at the right time to help Watson and Crick do so.
The Double Helix changed the way the public viewed scientists and the way they work. In the same way, Watson's first textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Gene, set a new standard for textbooks, particularly through the use of concept heads—brief declarative subheadings. Its style has been emulated by almost all succeeding textbooks. His next great success was Molecular Biology of the Cell, although here his role was more that of coordinator of an outstanding group of scientist-writers. His third textbook was Recombinant DNA, which used the ways in which genetic engineering has brought us so much new information about how organisms function. All the textbooks are still in print.
In 1989, Watson's achievement and success led to his appointment as the Head of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, a position he held until April 10, 1992. Watson left the Genome Project after conflicts with the new NIH Director, Bernadine Healy. Watson was opposed to Healy's attempts to acquire patents on gene sequences, and any ownership of the "laws of nature." Two years before stepping down from the Genome Project, he had stated his opinion on this long and ongoing controversy which he saw as an illogical barrier to research; he said, "The nations of the world must see that the human genome belongs to the world's people, as opposed to its nations." He left within weeks of the 1992 announcement that the NIH would be applying for patents on brain-specific cDNAs. In 1994, Watson became President of CSHL. Dr. Francis Collins took over the role as Director of the Human Genome Project. He became the second person  to publish his fully sequenced genome online, after it was presented to him on May 31, 2007 by 454 Life Sciences Corporation in collaboration with scientists at the Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine. "I am putting my genome sequence on line to encourage the development of an era of personalized medicine, in which information contained our genomes can be used to identify and prevent disease and to create individualized medical therapies," said Watson.
Harvard University, 1956-1976
Watson achieved a series of academic promotions from Assistant Professor, to Associate Professor to full Professor of Biology. He championed a switch in focus for the school from classical biology to molecular biology, stating that disciplines such as ecology, developmental biology, taxonomy, physiology, etc. had stagnated and could only progress once the underlying disciplines of molecular biology and biochemistry had elucidated their underpinnings, going so far as to discourage their study by students.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1968-2007
In a retrospective summary of Watson's accomplishments at CSHL, Laboratory President Dr. Bruce Stillman said, "Jim Watson created a research environment that is unparalleled in the world of science." It was "under his direction [that the Lab has] made major contributions to understanding the genetic basis of cancer." Generally in his roles as Director, President, and Chancellor, Watson led CSHL to its present day mission, which is "dedicat[ion] to exploring molecular biology and genetics in order to advance the understanding and ability to diagnose and treat cancers, neurological diseases, and other causes of human suffering." On October 25, 2007, Watson retired at the age of 79 from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory "after nearly 40 years of distinguished service." In a statement, Watson attributed his retirement to his age, and circumstances that he could never have anticipated or desired.
Allen Institute for Brain Science
Dr. Watson is now the Institute advisor for the newly-formed Allen Institute for Brain Science. The Institute, located in Seattle, Washington, was founded in 2003 by Philanthropists Paul G. Allen and Jody Allen Patton as a nonprofit corporation (501(c) (3)) and medical research organization. A multidisciplinary group of neuroscientists, molecular biologists, informaticists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, and computational biologists have been brought together to form the scientific core of the Allen Institute. Utilizing the mouse model system, these fields have joined together to investigate expression of 20,000 genes in the adult mouse brain and to map gene expression to a cellular level beyond neuroanatomic boundaries. The data generated from this joint effort is contained in the publicly available Allen Brain Atlas application located at www.brain-map.org. Upon completion of the Allen Brain Atlas, this consortium of scientists will pursue additional questions to further our understanding of neuronal circuitry and the neuroanatomic framework that defines the functionality of the brain.
Champalimaud Foundation, 2007-Present
In January 2007, Dr. Watson accepted the invitation of Leonor Beleza, president of the Champalimaud Foundation, to become the head of the foundation's scientific council, an advisory organ. He will be in charge of selecting the remaining council members.
Honorary Degrees Awarded
Professional & Honorary Affiliations
During his tenure as a professor at Harvard, Watson participated in several political protests:
Watson's sometimes abrasive and aggressive personality (once described by E. O. Wilson as "the most unpleasant human being I had ever met") has made him the subject of several controversies; the controversy over his book The Double Helix was merely one such example. In his autobiography, Avoid boring People, he describes his academic colleagues as "dinosaurs", "deadbeats", "fossils", "has-beens", "mediocre", and "vapid".
Use of King's College results
An enduring controversy has been generated by Watson and Crick's use of DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. The controversy arose from the fact that some of Franklin's unpublished data was used by Watson and Crick in their construction of the double helix model of DNA. Franklin's experimental results provided estimates of the water content of DNA crystals and these results were consistent with the two sugar-phosphate backbones being on the outside of the molecule. Franklin personally told Crick and Watson that the backbones had to be on the outside. Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the two DNA strands were antiparallel. The X-ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. Franklin's experimental work thus proved crucial in Watson and Crick's discovery. Watson and Crick had three sources for Franklin's unpublished data: 1) her 1951 seminar, attended by Watson, 2) discussions with Wilkins, who worked in the same laboratory with Franklin, 3) a research progress report that was intended to promote coordination of Medical Research Council-supported laboratories. Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin all worked in MRC laboratories.
Prior to publication of the double helix structure, Watson and Crick had little interaction with Franklin. Crick and Watson felt that they had benefited from collaborating with Wilkins. They offered him a co-authorship on the article that first described the double helix structure of DNA. Wilkins turned down the offer, a fact that may have led to the terse character of the acknowledgment of experimental work done at King's College in the eventual published paper. Rather than make any of the DNA researchers at King's College co-authors on the Watson and Crick double helix article, the solution that was arrived at was to publish two additional papers from King's College along with the helix paper. Biographer Brenda Maddox suggested that because of the importance of her work to Watson and Crick's model building, Franklin should have had her name on the original Watson and Crick manuscript. Franklin may have never known the extent to which her unpublished data had helped in the double helix discovery. According to one critic, unprotected by libel laws, Watson's portrayal of Franklin in The Double Helix was negative, giving the appearance that she was Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data.
In his book The Double Helix, Watson described being intimidated by Franklin and that they were unable to establish constructive scientific interactions during the time period when Franklin was doing DNA research. In the book's epilogue, written after Franklin's death, Watson acknowledges his early impressions of Franklin were often wrong, that she faced enormous barriers as a woman in the field of science even though her work was superb, and that it took years to overcome their bickering before appreciating Franklin's generosity and integrity.
A review of the handwritten correspondence from Franklin to Watson, located in the archives at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, reveals that the two scientists later had exchanges of constructive scientific correspondence. In fact, Franklin consulted with Watson on her Tobacco Mosaic Virus RNA research. Franklin's letters begin on friendly terms with "Dear Jim", and conclude with equally benevolent and respectful sentiments like "Best Wishes, Yours, Rosalind". As is typical with scientific research, each of the scientists published their own unique contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA in separate articles, and all of the contributors published their findings in the same volume of Nature. These classic molecular biology papers are identified as: Watson J.D. and Crick F.H.C. "A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" Nature 171, 737-738 (1953), Wilkins M.H.F., Stokes A.R. & Wilson, H.R. "Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids" Nature 171, 738-740 (1953), Franklin R. and Gosling R.G. "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate" Nature 171, 740-741 (1953). Franklin did not receive a Nobel Prize for her important contribution because the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.
The wording on the DNA sculpture outside Clare College's Thirkill Court, Cambridge, England is:
On the base:
On the helices:
Statement claiming links between race and intelligence
On October 14, 2007, a biographical article written by one of Watson's former assistants, Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine in anticipation of his soon to be released, in the UK, memoir Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science.
Watson was quoted as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" as "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really." Hunt-Grubbe stated that Watson's "hope" was "everyone is equal" but quoted him as having said "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." Furthermore, Grubbe suggested that Watson believed "you should not discriminate on the basis of colour" by quoting him as having said "there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level."
Watson was then attributed as having written "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."
The quotes attributed to him drew attention and criticism from press in several countries and was widely discussed on CNN, the BBC, several papers, peers and by civil rights advocates. The common perception was that of Watson claiming a link between race and intelligence with the BBC stating that "[Watson] claimed black people were less intelligent than white people". In his book, the origin of the final written quote, Watson does not directly mention race as a factor in his hypothesized divergence of intellect between geographically isolated populations.
On October 18th, The London Science Museum canceled a talk that Watson was scheduled to give the following day, stating that they believed Watson's comments had "gone beyond the point of acceptable debate." On the same day the Board of Trustees at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended Watson's administrative responsibilities, stating that "this action follows the Board’s public statement yesterday disagreeing with the comments attributed to Dr. Watson in the October 14, 2007 edition of The Sunday Times U.K." that they "vehemently disagree with...and are bewildered and saddened" by. Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute a position inherited from Watson, said "I am deeply saddened by the events of the last week...in the aftermath of a racist statement...that was both profoundly offensive and utterly unsupported by scientific evidence.".
On October 19th, Watson issued an apology, stating that he was "mortified" and "cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said." He also claimed to "understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have . . . To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."
In an attempt to clarify his position, Watson said that "we do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things," and "the overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity." Adding that "it may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers."
Despite the apology and subsequent attempt to clarify his position the controversy continued. He returned to the US and Cold Harbor on the 19th October putting his further engagements in doubt. The University of Edinburgh's formally retracted an invitation to the "DNA, Dolly and Other Dangerous Ideas: The Destiny of 21st Century Science" Enlightenment Lecture on October 22nd.
Watson resigned from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on October 25th. Watson cited reasons for his retirement other than the controversy, though did refer to it; "Closer now to 80 than 79, the passing on of my remaining vestiges of leadership is more than overdue. The circumstances in which this transfer is occurring, however, are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired."
It was announced on December 9, 2007 in a Sunday Times article that 16% of Watson's DNA is of African origin, sixteen times the European average of 1% suggesting that he might have had a great-grandparent of African origin. This conclusion was reached by deCODE Genetics, an Icelandic genetic company, which analysed Watson's genetic code, which he published on the internet in the interests of science.
|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "James_D._Watson". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.|


This Knowledge or Instinct? Jack London's "To Build a Fire" lesson plan also includes:
- Join to access all included materials
Students examine the relationship of man and nature in "To Build a Fire" and discuss the juxtaposition of knowledge and instinct. They investigate third person, omniscient point of view.
66 Views 98 Downloads


Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego say an evolutionary gene mutation that occurred in human millions of years ago and our subsequent inability to produce a specific kind of sugar molecule appears to make people more vulnerable to developing type 2 diabetes, especially if they’re overweight.
The findings are published in the Feb. 24 online edition of The FASEB Journal, a publication of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology.
Corresponding study author, Jane J. Kim is an assistant professor in the UCSD Department of Pediatrics and a member of the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, a research and teaching affiliate of the UCSD School of Medicine. Kim said the findings represent the first documented evidence linking the sugar production to insulin and glucose metabolism problems associated with diabetes.
“It opens up a new perspective in understanding the causes of diabetes,” said Kim. “Given the global epidemic of obesity and diabetes, we think that these findings suggest that evolutionary changes may have influenced our metabolism and perhaps increased our risk of the disease.”
Type 2 diabetes is caused by both genetic and environmental factors, such as a fatty diet and lack of exercise, that result in progressively dysfunctional pancreatic beta cells, elevated blood sugar levels due to insulin resistance and eventual health complications, sometimes fatally so. Diabetes is an expanding problem, nationally and globally. In the United States, more than 25 million adults and children — almost nine percent of the population — have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. Another 79 million Americans are estimated to be prediabetic. Worldwide, roughly 285 million people are believed to have the disease.
Sialic acids are sugar molecules found on the surfaces of all animal cells, where they act as vital contact points for interaction with other cells and with their surrounding environment. Virtually all mammals produce two types: N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac) and N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc).
Humans are the exception. For reasons lost in the mists of evolution, a mutation in a gene called CMAH occurred 2 to 3 million years ago, inactivating an enzyme in humans that catalyzes production of Neu5Gc by adding a single oxygen atom to Neu5Ac.
Researchers compared two groups of mice: one with a functional CMAH gene, the other with an altered CMAH gene similar to the human mutation. Both groups of mice were fed a high-fat diet. Mice in both groups became obese and developed insulin resistance. However, only mice with the CMAH gene mutation experienced pancreatic beta cell failure — the cells that make and release insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar levels.
Kim said the findings help refine understanding of why obese humans appear to be particularly vulnerable to type 2 diabetes, and also suggest that current animal models used to study diabetes may not accurately mirror the human condition. In clinical terms, she said further research to determine how sialic acid composition affects pancreatic beta cell function may reveal new strategies to preserve the cells, improve insulin production and prevent diabetes.
Co-authors of the study are Sarah Kavaler and Alice Jih, UCSD Department of Pediatrics and Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego; Hidetaka Morinaga and WuQuiang Fan, UCSD Department of Medicine; Maria Hedlund and Ajit Varki, UCSD departments of Medicine, Cellular and Molecular Medicine and UCSD Glycobiology Research and Training Center.
Funding support was provided by the National Institutes of Health.


What kind of therapy works with kids with social skills deficits?
When parents are told that their child or teen needs “social skills” therapy they often enter into a confusing process of looking for therapeutic services. This is partly because there are so many different types of therapeutic approaches. How do you know which is the right one? How do you even know what approach a certain therapist uses?
Cognitive-behavioural therapy is the therapeutic approach that is most effective in helping children with social skills deficits. Briefly, cognitive-behavioural therapy is a structured and directive type of therapy that aims to uncover how our thinking process effects how we feel and behave. Often children and teens with social skills deficits are having some type of difficulty reading the social environment and responding to it in appropriate ways. That is why they may stick out as different or shy away from social interactions. The cognitive-behavioural therapist helps by finding out what someone is thinking and consequently how they are feeling and reacting in certain situations. Work is then done to correct any misconceptions and develop different patterns of thinking and responding to events or feelings.
Here’s an example of how this might work with a real life situation:
Lachlan expects his Mum to pick him up from school and take him to the toy shop. He is very excited and has been thinking about it all day. Mum drives up and tells Lachlan they have to go to the doctors because Lachlan’s sister is sick. Lachlan thinks they should still be able to go to the toy store and becomes agitated and melts down when mum explains they will have to go another day. Lachlan’s distress lasts for the rest of the day and evening.
When Lachlan goes to therapy the next day his mum describes what happened when their plans changed the day before. The therapist identifies Lachlan’s inability to shift his thinking as the major contributor to Lachlan’s difficulty. Lachlan’s therapist understands that once Lachlan’s mum told Lachlan they couldn’t go to the toy store, he wasn’t really able to take in what she said afterwards (about his sister being sick),because his rigid way of thinking immediately led to strong emotions that he had difficulty coping with. Lachlan’s therapist visually maps out with Lachlan what he thought and how he felt using cartoon drawings and having Lachlan fill in the thought and feeling” bubbles”. The therapist uses many different techniques to help Lachlan see how his way of thinking leaves him upset and unhappy. He will be given a visual tool to use in future moments when he gets “stuck” in his rigid way of thinking. The therapist’s short term goals with Lachlan will be helping him to become a more flexible thinker so that these common everyday situations don’t throw him off to the extent they always had.
This type of therapy works with kids who have social skills challenges because it helps fill in gaps of missing social information for the child. It also helps them become more aware of their thinking patterns and reactions to those patterns.
When trying to find a therapist for a child it is important to ask the therapist what is their particular approach. They may not specifically use the term “cognitive-behavioural therapy” but describe a structured approach like the one outlined above. It is also important to ask a therapist how much experience they have had working with children with social skill challenges. Most of the kids we see in our practise have a hard time using language to describe events and their emotions. A therapist needs to know how to get information from kids with language and processing issues. Often this takes experience, the ability to evaluate a child’s learning style, and the availability to access a variety of different tools that have been learnt and tested over time.
Should a child be in individual or group therapy?
It is always very helpful to see a child with social skills deficits with his or her peers. Ideally, these children should be seen in small groups with a low child to therapist ratio.
Basically, groups need to be safe experiences for all the children or teens in the group and the group leaders must insure that the “social cost” of one child’s behaviour does not make it impossible for the other group members to come to accept this child in future groups. Some children walk a thin in as they make their way into a group setting. Practitioners need to be very aware of how to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the group.
There are times when group is not beneficial and we will outline some of them below.
- When a child is so resistant to the idea of group that they are determined to sabotage their experience.*
- When a child’s anxiety is so high in a group situation that they become aggressive or display behaviour that is unsafe to themselves or others.
- When a child is so defensive about their deficits that they are unable to accept that they need help and strike out at their peers (verbally or physically) as a result.
Many older children and teens express some displeasure at having to join a group, but that is usually a result of anxiety about the unknown. We find that within the first couple of weeks a majority of kids who had expressed some reluctance to join the group now enjoy coming. What we are speaking of in this instance is a child or teen that absolutely does not want it to work out and sees themselves as being forced to participate.
Oftentimes a child or teen may need individual therapy prior to joining a group in order to be “group ready” and get the most out of the group situation as possible. After one-on-one work with the therapist, which is aimed at helping the child develop coping skills for use within the group, the child can enter a group and have a much better chance at success. Another combination is to have the child come right before group for an individual session so that they can be prepared for their group experience by one of the group leaders. This often helps a child who wants to be in group, but is having difficulty tolerating the length of the group meeting or has some small behaviour that gets in his way with particular group members. (for example, always wanting to go first in a game or not being able to tolerate losing a game.)
Individual therapy is always helpful in addressing issues outside the group (for example, experiencing a loss or family problems.) or when a child seems depressed or anxious. Some issues are too large or not relevant enough to the group work to be dealt with in a group setting.
How will my child learn to read and respond appropriately to social situations?
As we discussed in the last newsletter when parents are told that their child or teen needs social skills therapy they often enter into a confusing process of looking for the right therapeutic services. Part of that confusion may stem from the fact that we don’t think about social skills in the same way that we think about academic skills. Academic skills are broken down into small segments that are then tracked and graded. Social skills are not typically broken down, tracked or graded. Social skills difficulties are not noticed until there is a problem such as when a child is consistently behind his peers in social behaviours. Or if a child is bullied, constantly excluded or ostracized. If a child is at grade level academically it may take a long time for these social difficulties to be noticed and considered an issue. At that point parents need to look at all of the recourses available to their child, both in and out of school, which their child can tap into to develop stronger social skills.
The long term goal for the child is that they be able to read and respond appropriately to social situations. But how do they get there? Through our work with many children we have found that this remediation needs to be offered in small, incremental steps, each step leading toward that long term goal. Understanding the depth and breadth of this process is key to helping a child be successful. Pushing a child ahead before the incremental steps have been taught or keeping a child insulated by making the social world so accommodating by not expecting them to take these steps will prevent that goal from being attained.
To begin with it is important for as many people in the child’s life as possible to understand that some social skills deficits are not a choice, not a result of bad parenting, not an oppositional response to authority ( as it can often look). Many children with social skills deficits have a neurological basis to their disability. The children tend to be bright, might be academically on (or above) grade level in most subjects and might do better socially with adults or children much younger than themselves. The idea that these children only need to be with socially proficient peers to learn more adaptive social skills is a fallacy. While most children learn to read and respond appropriately to social situations, a child with a social skills disability is unable to do that, even though this child might have an average or above average cognitive IQ and pick up information and academic skills quite well.
Once this is understood remediation can begin. An accurate assessment of the child’s social skill level is key. We have found that almost all children with social skills deficits have a very difficult, if not impossible time of reading nonverbal (and sometimes verbal) social cues. They tend to think concretely, and their use and understanding of language stays concrete even as they get older. Because of this they can misperceive the intentions of others. Much of social interaction is quite abstract. Children who think and learn concretely need this information translated in order to understand it, process it, and respond to it. This translation can be done verbally and visually. We have found that children who have people in their lives who can do this begin to take the steps necessary to reach their social goals. Whoever is providing this type of translation needs to be proficient in taking abstract concepts and making them concrete. They also need to know the child well so that the language or visual aids they use will match that child’s learning style and emotional readiness to move from step to step along the social skills continuum. This is best accomplished in an ongoing social skills group where real life situations present the therapist/translator with the opportunity to observe the child’s difficulties and to intervene with the appropriate information.
Individual sessions may also be needed for the child who needs more encouragement and motivation to take these difficult steps. Once the child has accomplished some of the smaller basic steps in this process, other people in their lives can play an important role by helping the child generalize these skills. To do this, they can provide additional clear, concise, concrete social information to the child using the language that the translator/therapist has developed with the child.
Repetition is a necessary component of this type of learning. When more people in the children’s lives are speaking this concrete language and helping them stretch their social skill ability at an appropriate pace, the long term goals can be reached.


Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera Release: MOC2-58a, -58b, -58c, -58d Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera Image ID: 577869444.25905 P259-05
CAPTIONOn July 20, 1969, the first human beings landed on the Moon. On July 20, 1976, the first robotic lander touched down on Mars. This July 20th-- 29 years after Apollo 11 and 22 years since the Viking 1 Mars landing-- we take a look forward toward one possible future exploration site on the red planet.
One of the advantages of the Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) over its predecessors on the Viking and Mariner spacecraft is resolution. The ability to see--resolve--fine details on the martian surface is key to planning future landing sites for robotic and, perhaps, human explorers that may one day visit the planet.
At present, NASA is studying potential landing sites for the Mars Surveyor landers, rovers, and sample return vehicles that are scheduled to be launched in 2001, 2003, and 2005. Among the types of sites being considered for these early 21st Century landings are those with "exobiologic potential"--that is, locations on Mars that are in some way related to the past presence of water.
For more than a decade, two of the prime candidates suggested by various Mars research scientists are Gusev Crater and Ma'adim Vallis. Located in the martian southern cratered highlands at 14.7° S, 184.5° W, Gusev Crater is a large, ancient, meteor impact basin that--after it formed--was breached by Ma'adim Vallis.
Viking Orbiter observations provided some evidence to suggest that a fluid--most likely, water--once flowed through Ma'adim Vallis and into Gusev Crater. Some scientists have suggested that there were many episodes of flow into Gusev Crater (as well as flow out of Gusev through its topographically-lower northwestern rim). Some have also indicated that there were times when Ma'adim Vallis, also, was full of water such that it formed a long, narrow lake.
The possibility that water flowed into Gusev Crater and formed a lake has led to the suggestion that the materials seen on the floor of this crater--smooth-surfaced deposits, buried craters, and huge mesas near the mouth of Ma'adim Vallis--are composed of sediment that eroded out of the highlands to the south of Gusev Crater. In 1995, the Exobiology Program Office at NASA Headquarters produced a report, An Exobiological Strategy for Mars Exploration (NASA SP-530), that included Gusev Crater as a possible priority site for future Mars exploration because it might once have been a lake.
At 12:17 a.m. (PDT) on April 24, 1998--during Mars Global Surveyor's 259th orbit--MOC obtained the high resolution image of Gusev Crater and Ma'adim Vallis shown above, in part to test some of the proposed hypotheses. The raw image has a scale of 7.3 meters (24 feet) per pixel. At this scale, there are no obvious shorelines that would indicate the past presence of a lake in either Ma'adim Vallis or Gusev Crater. There are several alternative explanations for this absence, including:
Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO.
To MSSS Home Page


GERM-708-01 Remembering Heimat II - Imagining the Nation
Spring for 2015-2016
The German notion of ‘Heimat’ is linked to a specific geographical site while notions of the (German) nation transcend local sites and posit collective identities alternatively rooted in language and culture, history, ethnicity, or ‘race’. The two-part course sequence explores notions of ‘Heimat’ and the ‘nation’ at a number of pivotal moments in German cultural history.
The first course – which is recommend but not required for taking the second one -- examines notions of Heimat and the German nation as they emerged around 1800 and evolved in the early 19th century.
This second course explores how notions of Heimat and Germanness changed in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. We will look briefly at the early post-war period, but special attention will be given to literature, film, and culture in the pre- and post-unification periods (1970-present). While topics that were considered in the first course continue to play a role (i.e., gendered notions of Heimat/nation; issues of inclusion/exclusion), the overarching questions of this second course are: to what extent and with what effects are national and, more recently, transnational forces counteracted by a revival of local identities and geographically bounded notions of belongingt? How can we approach the complex sentiment of nostalgia – and what is its relationship to memory, identity, utopia, regression/repression, and irony? And, finally, what is the analytical value of the notion of Heimat in the context of post/modernity and changing notions of space and place?
Other academic years
There is information about this course number in other academic years:


Western Civilization Mercantilism Was a Essay
- Length: 4 pages
- Sources: 2
- Subject: Government
- Type: Essay
- Paper: #97124810
Excerpt from Essay :
The decision to intervene in Latin American revolutions however brought internal conflict to the Concert, with Britain refusing to take part. The premise was that Britain's trade and profit from the Spanish would be lost with the end of the rebellion.
6. The Revolutions of 1848 took place throughout Europe as a result of cumulative political and economic issues. The economy was experiencing a downturn in concomitance with the historical and current abuse of political power by leaderships. As such, the general issues behind the Revolutions were basically uniform for all the countries involved, although they may have taken different forms in the individual countries. The response to the revolutions was suppression and elimination. They therefore did not last long. The main reason for this failure was the internal conflict experienced by revolutionaries. This disunity weakened the revolutionary force and led to its ultimate demise.
7. In the unification process, Count Cavour approached significant leaders such as Napoleon III of France to intervene in the effort. In this way, the Count was able to orchestrate the inclusion of most of northern Italy in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. In Germany, Otto von Bismarck believed in the ancient Feudal system, with Kings to be obeyed by people. His strategy therefore focused upon uniting people under a single ruler. Bismarck sought to gain power through war. Germany would probably be the most likely candidate for future leadership in terms of its focus on autonomy, whereas Italy was more focused upon inclusion
8. Women during the second half of the 19th century were seen as little more than servants. They worked in the home, raising children and being involved in other household activities. They could not vote, study, or legally enter a profession, although many of them did work in factories, as domestic servants and in shops. They were therefore far from unused to work. They grew discontent because they saw a discrepancy between their situation and that of their male counterparts. By 1914 women had the vote, but still had to struggle against stereotyping and discrimination. They protested this by becoming actively involved in the war, and via pamphlets and speeches.
9. The Industrial Revolution was the main and biggest technological changed between 1850 and 1914. This significantly changed how people saw the universe and how human beings are to arrange their lives within this universe. Increasing amounts of people moved to cities, where they felt they would be able to make more money. Human beings were to control the universe and use it as a tool for their personal, financial gain.
10. The Irish Question referred to the dire economic and social situation in Ireland, and what the British were expected to do towards remedying these problems by establishing a fair government. Gladstone's proclaimed his mission to pacify Ireland. It was however not easy in the political climate of the time, and many had different ideas regarding the Irish issue. In particular, the Irish felt weary of long years of oppression. Gladstone's attempt to pacify them was seen as too little, too late, and the Irish began to take matters into their own hands.
One of the ways in which this was done was the Irish Land League, which functioned to evict people from their residences. Laws were however established in order to do this in a fair and timely manner. Groups wishing for political power also used the issue for their own gain, such as the Fenian Society.
Age-of-the-sage.org. (2008). Adam Smith Wealth of Nations. http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/philosophy/wealth_nations.html
BBC (2006). The Irish Question: Episode 62 http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/empire/episodes/episode_62.shtml
Biography Resource Center. (2001). Napoleon's Coronation. http://www.lasvegasnapoleon.com/napoleon.html
Brians, Paul. (2000, May 18). The Enlightenment. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html
Concert of Europe. http://www.cusd.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/concert/concessy.html
Making the Modern World. (2008). The Emergence of an Industrial and urban Britain.
The France of Victor Hugo (2008). 1789: the Fact and Fiction of the Sans-Colottes Movement. http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/la/sans-culottes.html
No Job for a Woman (2008). A woman's place is in the home. http://www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/30/women/pre.htm
The Open Door Web Site. (2008). Germany 1848-1871. http://www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/30/women/pre.htm
Silva, Bratt (2000). Revolutions of 1848.


||Disclaimer: I am not a spokesperson for the US Coast Guard or ABYC. For an official interpretation of regulations or standards you must contact the US Coast Guard or other organization referenced.. More.....|
Natural Ventilation: A natural ventilation system is required on all boats with compartments that contain a permanently installed gasoline engine or a fuel tank, unless that space is open to the atmosphere.
Open to the atmosphere: This means, if there is at least 15 square inches of (96.77 Sq. Cm)opening to the atmosphere for each cubic foot (0.03 Cubic Meters) of net compartment volume, then you don't have to provide ventilation. Any openings will do. However be aware that gasoline vapors are heavier than air. If all the openings are at the top of the space, and there is no air flow, then the vapors can still be trapped at the bottom:
compartments open to the atmosphere:
Natural ventilation must be provided in:
1. A space that contains a permanently installed gasoline engine.
2. A space that contains a permanently installed fuel tank and an electrical component that is not ignition protected.
3. A fuel tank that vents into that compartment (portables vent to the compartment they are in)
4. Contains a non-metallic fuel tank. (Plastic tanks)
The Natural Ventilation System must be made up of, at least:
1. A supply opening or duct from the atmosphere or from a ventilated compartment that is ventilated to the atmosphere, and :
2. An exhaust opening located on the exterior of the boat
What does all that mean? You must have a means to bring in air from the outside and a means to take air out of the compartment, to the outside of the boat. Air in from the outside, air out to the outside.
Each exhaust opening must originate in the lower third of the compartment. This is because the fuel vapors collect in the bottom of the boat. So the duct that takes the air out has to begin in the lower part of the compartment.
Each supply opening or duct, and exhaust opening or duct must be above the normal accumulation of bilge water. Get it low enough to get the vapors out but not so low it sucks up bilge water.
The openings or ducts must be sized to move enough air in and out of the compartment. The absolute minimum size is an opening of 3 (three) square inches (19.35 Square Cm.)
Here's a graph (Cubic Feet) from the regulations that will help you to figure out the correct size. First add up the volume of the compartment. Subtract the volume of the engine, battery, fuel tank and any other large equipment in the space. (Generators, flotation blocks etc). Then reading up from the bottom of the graph (compartment volume) go up to the curve, and the read over to the left side of the graph to get area of the opening. You can have more than one exhaust opening and more than one intake opening to meet the requirement. The important thing is airflow.
To help determine the rated capacity of a blower for your system look at this graph of air flow versus compartment volume. (in Cubic Feet)
To see the full size graphs click on the image
Ducts comes in standard sizes. (Dimensions are inside diameter)
|4.91 Sq. In.||2,5 In Diam. (6.35 cm)|
|7.07 Sq. In.||3 In Diam. (7.62 cm)|
|9.62 Sq, In.||3.5 In Diam (8.89 cm)|
|12.57 Sq In.||4 In Diam (10.16 cm)|
|19.53 Sq. In||5 In Diam (12.7 cm)|
Any boat that has a permanently installed engine with a cranking motor (starter) must have a powered ventilation system: That simply means almost any inboard gasoline powered boat must have a blower built into the exhaust duct.
Warning Labels: See also Labels
You must have a label, called a Blower Warning Label. It can be anywhere on the control station but must be near the ignition switch. In other words, next to the key, or starter button. It must say words to the effect:
Beyond the Regulation: This is not law but is good engineering practice and recommended by ABYC.
The Need To Breathe: Engines need air to run properly. Lots of air. The air provided above is strictly to scavenge fumes from the engine compartment and may not be enough for the engine to breath properly. If this is the case, the engine will run poorly, not reach it's maximum horsepower or rpms, and produce more emissions, especially carbon monoxide. You need to make sure that the vent openings are large enough to provide the amount of air needed for the engine. A quick test on an existing boat is to start the engine, rev the engine to max and open the engine hatch. If the rpm goes up, it needs more air. On a boat you are building, you need to find out from the engine specs how many cubic feet of air per minute the engine needs at peak rpm, and make sure the vent openings are large enough to allow that much air in. Increasing the amount of air flow is easier than you may think. You can double the air flow simply by going from a three inch opening to a four inch opening. You do not have to double the size of the openings, ducts, etc. You can also improve the efficiency of the system by eliminating turns, especially right angle turns, eliminating constrictions at connections, and using smooth walled tubing rather than corrugated ducting.
Location of vent openings: Vent openings often have cowlings on them and many times one is pointed forward and the other is point aft. Actually, for natural ventilation this is not necessary. Practical tests have shown that when the boat is standing still the wind direction is what determines which opening is the inlet and which is the outlet. When the boat is moving and the blower is on, the duct that has the blower is the outlet. Also cowlings can often create restrictions in the amount of air flow. Use cowlings that do not reduce the size of the openings.
Preventing Water Intrusion: One thing you do need to know is that placing the cowls on the side of the boat, or back (transom) of the boat, can result in the boat sinking if water enters the opening. This is not a joke. Numerous boats have been sunk because water came in the vents. If the vent is on the side or transom, route the duct up in a loop, an upside down U shape (in the plumbing world called a P trap) and then down, so the top of the loop is several inches higher than the vent opening, or use a manifold inside the opening and have the duct enter the top of the manifold. Provide a drain from the manifold out the side of the boat to get rid of accumulated water. This doesn't just happen on small boats. At a boat show, I was looking at a 60 foot houseboat. You could see right into the engine room through the ventilation cowls. This is a disaster waiting to happen. If you use manifolds to prevent water intrusion, make sure they do not reduce air flow.
Blowers: There are different types of blowers. Squirrel Cage Blowers and Axial Flow Blowers (often called in line blowers). Squirrel cage blowers change the direction of the air flow by 90 degrees. Axial flow blowers are in line with the ducting and do not change the direction of the flow. Squirrel cage blowers are generally more expensive thatn axial flow blowers. Which type you use depends on the layout of the engine room and layout of the ducting as well as the location of the vents to the otside of the boat.
Be careful when selecting a blower. The inlet and exhaust openings on the blower may be much smaller than the size of the ducting. It may actually be smaller than the required size of ducting and then restrict the airflow to less than what is needed. So, if this is the case, go to a larger size duct and get the next larger blower.
Use only an ignition protected blower.
Sharp bends in the ducting can reduce the airflow by as much as half. This includes the loop. So, when everything is being installed do a test. Don't guess. You can rent airflow meters. Check out what the actual airflow is at the exit vent.
Do not put air vents within 15 inches (38.1 cm.) of a fuel tank vent, a fuel fill, or an engine exhaust. Vapors will be sucked in, or if near an engine exhaust, carbon monoxide can enter the boat through the ventilation system. Also, it is best not to have aft facing ventilation openings on the transom. Intakes there can allow engine exhaust to enter the interior of the boat. So it's best not to put vent openings on the stern.
Copyright newboatbuilders.com 2010 All rights reserved. Revised 08/20/2016


The 50th Annual Arthur L. Throckmorton Memorial Lecture
Date: 3:30pm PST February 25, 2013 Location: Templeton Campus Center
Templeton Campus Center
Improving the Human Race One Gene at a Time: The Curious History of Eugenics in the Twentieth Century
The early twentieth century science of eugenics was a remarkable transnational phenomenon that influenced social and scientific policy across the political spectrum and in a bewildering variety of locations around the globe. The prospect of connecting biology and social policy proved seductive in many political arenas, and Dr. Levine’s talk will offer a glimpse of some of those many settings.
Eugenics speaks to questions of race, class, gender and sex, evolution, governance, nationalism, disability, and the social implications of science. In the age of the human genome project, stem cell research and new reproductive technologies, the history of eugenics has much to teach us about the relationship between scientific research, technology, and human ethical decision-making.
Philippa Levine is the Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin where she is also co-director of the university’s British Studies Program. Before coming to Texas in 2010 she was a member of the history faculty at the University of Southern California and the Florida State University and has also taught in her native Britain and in Australia.
Dr. Levine received her bachelor’s and master’s degree from King’s College, Cambridge, and her doctorate from Oxford University. She specializes in the history of Modern Britain and the British Empire with a particular interest in science, medicine and society and the intersections of race and gender. Among her many awards and honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007-8), a Resident Fellowship at the Bellagio Center, Rockefeller Foundation (2002), and research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Institutes of Health. She has also held various visiting fellowships in Australia, Britain, Ireland, and Canada and is the immediate past president of the North American Conference on British Studies.
Dr. Levine has authored or edited the following books: The Ashgate Companion to Modern Imperial Histories (2012), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010), Gender, Labour, War and Empire in Modern Britain. Essays on Modern Britain (2009), The British Empire, Sunrise to Sunset, (2007), Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, 1860-1950 (2007), Gender and Empire: Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (2004), Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (2003), Women’s Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race (2000), Feminist Lives in Victorian England Private Roles and Public Commitment (1990), Victorian Feminism 1850-1900, (1987), The Amateur and the Professional: Historians, Antiquarians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838-1886 (1986).
The Throckmorton lecture was established in 1963 to commemorate the life and work of Arthur L. Throckmorton, a professor of history at Lewis & Clark who died unexpectedly in 1962. Each year the series brings a distinguished historian to campus to lecture and to meet with faculty and students.


Workplaces in the US, Northern Europe and the UK tend to exist within a culture where 'problem-based' development approaches to learning tend to outnumber 'affirming' ones. There is a widely-held assumption in Western culture that improvement comes primarily from the eradication of defect or error. This approach of informed criticism and constructive problem solving has indeed exposed important flaws, and led to huge progress in countless domains. Westerners have become so focused on solving problems that the negative things are often the ones noticed first. People rarely look into the reasons for 'rightness' in the same way that they enquire rigorously when things go wrong. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is not the "Positive Thinking" movement. AI can be defined as the art of discovering and valuing those factors that 'give life' to an organisation, group, individual or relationship.
Vanstone, C. (2004) Affirmative Action, Training Magazine, 1 June.


Presenting 15 Rare & Old Photo’s of London | Mega Series Part 2
1. People asleep on the platform of Holborn underground station during an air raid, 1940
2. Barges at Alchin’s wharf in Putney, circa 1880.
3. Coventry Street, London_C.1955
4. The platform of the Central London Railway extension at Liverpool Street Station_C.1912
5. A Woman presses the button on a new set of traffic lights in Croydon, to signal cars to stop at the pedestrian crossing_C1932
6. Creation of the Central Line in 1898
7. Summer days of 1852 Hippo Obaysch is spotted taking a nap in the Zoological Gardens in Regents Park. He was donated by Egypt in 1850 in exchange for English greyhounds and deerhounds, and he lived until 1878
8. A View of busy Piccadilly Circus by Charles Wilson, taken around 1890.
9. Notting Hill, North Kensington, London _c-1906
10. A moment in time, Commercial Street East London 1907.
11. The Streets of a ruined London after The Blitz_C.1940.
12. Members of the public being entertained by an ENSA concert party in Aldwych Underground Station, London_c1940
13. Women tar spraying the road, London_C. 1916
14. Traffic on London Bridge_c1890
15. It’s one of the most famous landmarks in the UK – and this unique shot shows Nelson’s Column under construction in April 1844
Old London Street Scenes (1903)
Colour film of London in 1927
From 1898, it was commonly accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos; this explanation has since been rejected. Richard Coates put forward an explanation in 1998 that it is derived from the pre-Celtic Old European *(p)lowonida, meaning ‘river too wide to ford’, and suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London; from this, the settlement gained the Celtic form of its name, *Lowonidonjon; this requires quite a serious amendment however. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *(h)lōndinion (as opposed to *londīnion), from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name.
Until 1889, the name “London” officially applied only to the City of London, but since then it has also referred to the County of London and now Greater London.
15 Rare & Old Photo’s of London | Mega Series Part 1
15 Rare & Old Photo’s of Chicago | Mega Series Part 3
15 Rare & Old Photo’s of Los Angeles | Mega Series Part 2
15 Rare & Old Photo’s of Los Angeles | Mega Series Part 1
15 Rare & Old Photo’s of Las Vegas | Mega Series- Part 5
20 Rare & Old Photo’s of San Francisco | Mega Series Part 2
15 Rare & Old Photo’s of New York | Mega Series Part 1
If you like this post, Then please, share it in different social media. Help our site to spread out.
[divider scroll_text=”Back To Top”]


Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Worldwide Map of Stress to Coral Reefs
Worldwide Map Identifies Important Coral Reefs Exposed to Stress
“Marine researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups have created a map of the world's corals and their exposure to stress factors, including high temperatures, ultra-violet radiation, weather systems, sedimentation, as well as stress-reducing factors such as temperature variability and tidal dynamics, that will help identify coral reef systems where biodiversity is high and stress is low, ecosystems where management has the best chance of success.
The exposure index ranges from 0-1, with green indicating sites with a low exposure index (most likely to benefit from management), and red indicating sites with a high exposure index (less likely to benefit from management).” From: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110811162835.htm
Thanks, Holly Porter-Morgan, for sending the link and the blurb.
For more information about how the exposure index was developed, see the source publication cited below.
Source publication: Joseph Maina, Tim R. McClanahan, Valentijn Venus, Mebrahtu Ateweberhan, Joshua Madin. Global Gradients of Coral Exposure to Environmental Stresses and Implications for Local Management. PLoS ONE, 2011; 6 (8): e23064 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023064


SIXTY years ago, one of the most momentous events to influence the destiny of the Jewish people took place in Petrograd. The Russian Revolution occurred within a few days of the Balfour Declaration, and both events have, in hindsight, deeply permeated Jewish consciousness and caused many to flock to either one of the utopian standards raised in those few weeks.
The Russian coup d’etat had been decided by a vote of the Bolshevik Committee a fortnight previously. A politburo of seven was entrusted with the task of carrying it out. Four of the seven—Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Sokolnikov — were Jews. Indeed, the success of the coup and the support generated has often been attributed to the brilliance of Trotsky’s military prowess and political acumen.
Yet the revolution was not specifically a Jewish affair. As enemies of the Bolsheviks tried to label it later on. There was certainly a preponderance of Jews in the upper echeIons of the party, but on the whole they were not attracted to the obscurantism of the Bolsheviks. If anything, revolutionary Jews tended to favour democratic socialist parties on the West European scale.
The Jewish community which had welcomed the overthrow of Tsarism saw the coup as one more step down the road to destruction of old Mother Russia. In July 1917, they had even staged a meeting in Petrograd to dissociate the community from “the anarchist campaign of few converted Jews”.
On the platform, Jewish members of the Russian Parliament spoke out forcibly, as did the historian, Simon Dubnov. The first Jewish naval officer, Isaacson, was present. A man called Tcherkass, a somewhat elderly Knight of the Order of St. George, fiercely called on the Jews in the audience to follow him into the trenches to fight the Germans. Outside, the starving masses, including Jews, cried out for peace and bread.
The Zionists who had been organising at a feverish rate were already sending people to Palestine. The Bolshevik coup d’etat appeared-to be a passing irrelevance. Indeed, in the Zionist stronghold of Odessa, all Jewish businesses dosed for a day on hearing the news of the Balfour Declaration. One hundred thousand Jews marched to the British Consulate to hear Menachem Usishkin publicly give thanks in Hebrew to Lady Muriel Paget, the representative of the British Government in the city.
Not all Russian Zionists accepted the Declaration. Poale Zion, which had been sympathetic to the ideals of the Bolshevik revolution referred to the Declaration at its conference in Kiev as “one of the attempts of world imperialism to exploit liberation movements for its own ends”.
Since the downfall of Tsarism, both the provisional government and Jewish self-defence groups had been making attempts to contain the violent anti-Semitism of groups such as the Black Hundreds The new Bolshevik alarmed the Zionists in trying to disband such self-defence groups. The Bolsheviks preferred the gentle methods of persuasion to stop the pogroms.
Jewish Observer November 1977


The importance of kinesis in body language.
More feelings, intentions, and emotions are communicated in nonverbal ways than in all verbal ways put together.
-Your Silent Language (Elizabeth McGough)
The study of body language isn't new, but it wasn't until 1952 that it acquired a name. That was the year that a professor at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute published a book called Introduction to Kinesis. Ray Birdwhistell defined kinesis as the "systematic study of how human beings communicate through body movement and gesture". He postulated that human beings all over the world communicate with each other through similar gestures and movements despite differences in culture and meaning. His book was the beginning of serious study of body language as a legitimate scientific form. In the three decades that followed, numerous books were written about nonverbal communication, but most focused on the way that animals communicate with each other. They were written for other scientists, not laymen - at least until Desmond Morris came along. With books like The Naked Ape, Morris brought the concept of body language and kinesis came to the attention of the general public.


March 30, 2021
Collaborative Care is an evidence based model of care for individuals with common mental health conditions identified in primary care, and provides organizations, practices, and providers with a system that ensures comprehensive care for patients with behavioral health needs. Many of the patients identified at at risk for suicide. Collaborative Cares patient centered, flexible, systemic approach allows for a more “high touch” model of care that individuals would often get in specialty mental health.
With more than 47,000 suicide deaths and an estimated 1.4 million attempts every year in the United States,1 suicide is the 10th leading cause of death, ranking alongside diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. Research shows that approximately 45% of people who died by suicide visited a primary care provider (PCP) in the month before their death.2 This places primary care practices in a unique position to reduce suicide deaths. To do this, primary care practices need to utilize the resources already available to help care for patients at risk for suicide.
One such resource is the Collaborative Care model. Traditionally, primary care providers make a referral for the emergency department or weekly therapy services for their patients at risk for suicide even if these options are not well suited to the patient’s situation or preferences about how they receive services. In contrast, Collaborative Care offers a short-term, patient-centered, high touch approach to caring for patients with thoughts of suicide in primary care.
Collaborative Care is an evidence-based model that identifies and treats behavioral health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, in the primary care settings where patients are already being seen. Collaborative Care is widely supported and is now a Medicare benefit, a Medicaid benefit in 18 states, and recognized as effective by most commercial health plans. Collaborative Care is a treat-to-target approach that has been widely adopted by primary care organizations, large and small, across the country.
Collaborative Care is ideal for patients at risk for suicide because it allows for more flexible and comprehensive follow up than a traditional mental health referral, even though outpatient mental health has traditionally been viewed as a “higher level of care.”
Primary care providers should consider Collaborative Care to treat their patients with mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, and some of those patients may be at risk for suicide.
By screening for behavioral health conditions in primary care settings, PCPs can not only identify suicidal risk, but through Collaborative Care they can assist patients by providing interventions such as suicide safety planning and counseling on access to lethal means.
To learn more, read the full paper here. For more information on working with Concert Health, contact us today.
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (2019). Suicide Statistics. Retrieved from https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
Luoma JB, Martin CE, Pearson JL. Contact with mental health and primary care providers before suicide: a review of the evidence. Am J Psychiatry. 2002;159:909-916


Why is American Milk Banned in Europe?
American dairy milk is genetically-modified unless it’s labeled “NO rBGH”
Genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone (rBGH) in milk increases cancer risks.
American dairy farmers inject rBGH to dairy cows to increase milk production.
European nations and Canada have banned rBGH to protect citizens from IGF-1 hazards.
Monsanto Co., the manufacturer of rBGH, has influenced U. S. product safety laws permitting the sale of unlabeled rBGH milk. (Monsanto would lose billions of dollars if rBGH were banned in America.)
Q. Is there any milk not contaminated with rBGH and IGF-1?
A. Yes. Milk that is clearly labeled “NO rBGH” is free of rBGH and does not contain excess levels of IGF-1.
Q. What about cheeses?
A. American-made cheeses are contaminated with rBGH and excess levels of IGF-1 unless they’re labeled “NO rBGH”. Imported European cheeses are safe since Europe has banned rBGH.
IGF-1 & Milk
Q. What is IGF-1?
A. Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1)is a normal growth factor. Excess levels have been increasingly linked by modern research to human cancer development and growth.
Q. How does IGF-1 get into milk?
A. In 1994, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). According to rBGH manufacturers, injections of rBGH causes cows to produce up to 20 percent more milk. The growth hormone also stimulates the liver to increase IGF-1 levels in the milk of those cows. Recently, Eli Lilly & Co., a manufacturer of rBGH, reported a ten-fold increase in IGF-1 levels in milk of cows receiving the hormone. IGF-1 is the same in humans and cows, and is not destroyed by pasteurization. In fact, the pasteurization process actually increases IGF-1 levels in milk.
Q. How does rBGH milk containing IGF-1, affect, humans?
A. After the rBGH milk is consumed, IGF-1 is not destroyed by human digestion. Instead, IGF-1 is readily absorbed across the intestinal wall. Additional research has shown that it can be absorbed into the bloodstream where it can effect other hormones.
Q. Is IGF-1 likely to increase the risk of specific kinds of cancer?
A. It is highly likely that IGF-1 promotes transformation of normal breast cells to breast cancers. In addition, IGF-1 maintains the malignancy of human breast cancer cells, including their invasiveness and ability to spread to distant organs. (Increased levels of IGF-1 have similarly been associated with colon and prostate cancers.) The prenatal and infant breast is particularly susceptible to hormonal influences. Such imprinting by IGF-1 may increase future breast cancer risks, and may also increase the sensitivity of the breast to subsequent unrelated risks such as mammography and the carcinogenic and estrogen-like effects of pesticide residues in food, particularly in pre-menopausal women.
Q. Are cows adversely affected by elevated IGF-1 levels?
A. Cows injected with rBGH show heavy localization of IGF-1 in breast (udder) epithelial cells. This does not occur in untreated cows. Cows are also affected in other ways by rBGH, through increased rates of mastitis, an udder infection. Industry data show up to an 80 percent incidence of mastitis in hormone-treated cattle, resulting in the contamination of milk with significant levels of pus. Mastitis requires the use of antibiotics to treat, which leaves residues to pass on through the milk for human consumption.
Q. What does the FDA say about IGF-1?
A. The FDA has trivialized evidence for increased levels in rBGH milk and insist that any such increases in IGF-1 are not dangerous, and do not pose a health risk. However, a 1990 study by Monsanto, the leading maker of rBGH, explicitly revealed statistically significant evidence of growth promoting effects. Feeding relatively low doses of IGF-1 to mature rats for only two weeks resulted in statistically significant and biologically highly significant systemic effects: increased body weight; increased liver weight; increased bone length; and decreased epiphyseal width. The FDA has failed to investigate the effects of long-term feeding of IGF-1 and treated milk on growth. Furthermore, the FDA has been hostile to the labeling of rBGH milk. The agency has prohibited dairy producers and retailers from labeling their milk as “hormone-free,” The FDA states that such labeling could be “false or misleading” under federal law. Monsanto is suing several milk producers for using the label.
Q. What have other scientists said about IGF-1?
A. Concerns about increased levels of IGF-1 in milk from cows treated with rBGH are not new. In 1990, the National Institutes of Health Consensus panel on rBGH expressed concerns about adverse health effects of IGF-1 in rBGH milk, calling for further study on health impacts, particularly infants. In 1991, the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association stated:” Further studies will be required to determine whether the ingestion of higher than normal concentrations of bovine insulin-like growth factor is safe for children, adolescents and adults.” Unfortunately, these studies were never done,
HERE ARE THREE THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO:
1. Do not buy milk from cows treated with rBGH. Unless the milk-label states “NO rBGH”, you can assume the milk is contaminated. rBGH has become so widely used by dairy farmers. Most health food stores sell rBGH-free milk.
2. Contact your local supermarket and find out if they have a policy regarding rBGH and milk. Make clear that you would like rBGH-free milk.
3. Write to the FDA and express your concern that they are restricting the labeling of rBGH-free milk.
Epstein, S. S. Potential public health hazards of biosynthetic milk
hormones. International Journal of Health Services, 20:73-84, 1990.
Epstein, S. S. Unlabeled milk from cows treated with biosynthetic
growth hormones: A case of regulatory abdication. International Journal of Health Services, 26(1):173-185, 1996.
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D., Chairman
Cancer Prevention Coalition
2121 West Taylor Street, M/C 922
Chicago, IL 60612


E. Cobham Brewer 18101897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
The patriarch of Ferney. Voltaire; so called because he retired to Ferney, a small sequestered village near Geneva, from which obscure retreat he poured forth his invectives against the French Government, the Church, nobles, huns, priests, and indeed all classes.
There are in Paris five or six statues of the patriarch of Ferney.The Times.


On May 18, Moderna released promising early data for their Covid-19 vaccine. It’s an mRNA vaccine – it gives a person’s cells the recipe for making a coronavirus protein so the person’s immune system can learn to attack it without the person actually having to get sick. Today I thought I’d tell you more about how this and other mRNA vaccines (hopefully) work, and what Moderna’s found so far. P.S. This post is for you dad (he was asking me a lot about it yesterday!)
note: I am not connected to Moderna in any way and this isn’t a paid endorsement or anything, I’m just trying to help people understand what I understand about what they’ve told us
Moderna’s is just one of over 90 coronavirus vaccines being developed. They all aim to do the same thing – introduce a person’s body to the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 (i.e. the SARS-Cov-2 virus) or some part of that virus in a harmless form. In the case of mRNA vaccines, they give the person copies of the genetic “recipe” for making a viral protein and get the cells to make it. These proteins then allow the person’s immune system to learn what the virus looks like without the person having to get sick. The “learning” involves developing little proteins called antibodies that (by combining unique variable regions with generic constant regions) specifically bind parts of the virus but don’t bind the person’s own molecules. This way, if the virus does try to infect the person, that person’s immune system can flag it right away and destroy it.
When disease-specific antibodies appear in a person’s blood – either after vaccination or actual infection – the person is said to have “seroconverted” (sero- is a prefix people use to refer to blood-y things). Tests like an ELISA use purified viral proteins as “probes” to see if someone’s blood contains antibodies that bind those proteins, but they don’t tell you about whether those antibodies are able to go the “extra step” and “neutralize” the virus by binding in such a way that they block the virus from getting into cells. To know if blood contains neutralizing antibodies, you have to do a more complicated test like a Plaque Reduction Neutralization Test (PRNT), which tests the ability of antibodies to prevent the virus from infecting cells in a dish. The infected cells appear as viral “plaques” on the dish & neutralizing antibodies are able to reduce the number of plaques, hence the creative name. You can learn a lot more about them in past posts I will link to, but I just wanted to introduce you to these, because they’re a couple of the tests that Moderna is reporting data from.
Moderna hasn’t released the full results of the trial, which is still ongoing, hence the “Interim Phase 1 Data” in their press release header: https://bit.ly/2ALQ21v but here’s what we know…
The FDA approval process involves phases of clinical testing – in the first phase you’re testing mainly for safety and dosage, and then in later phases you test larger sample sizes and look for actual effectiveness. Back on March 16, Moderna started a Phase 1 clinical trial, which was really fast – they were the first US company to begin a clinical SARS-CoV-2 vaccine trial. And this speed might worry people, because vaccines usually take decades to develop – but the key to the speed was the technique they’re using – mRNA (messenger RNA). mRNAs are the “formatted” copies of genes, written in RNA, and which protein-making complexes called ribosomes latch onto and make the corresponding proteins. mRNA is much easier to manufacture than other vaccine types, and, more crucial to the early start, all you need to know is the genetic sequence of the virus – you just need the recipe and you can go to work – make a bunch of copies of the recipe and then stick it in a lipid nanoparticle (give it an oily membrane coat that protects it, masks its negative charge, and allows it to easily get through our cells’ own oily membrane coats.)
Of course, they have to choose the right protein and maybe tweak it a bit, but it’s still much much easier that having to actually express and purify the protein! And Moderna had experience doing this mRNA-making-and-delivering – Most people probably hadn’t heard of Moderna before recently, but, as an RNA researcher, I had – I’ve even seen their workers presenting presenting research at conferences. I’m not saying this to like name-drop or anything, just to say that Moderna has been around (but only since 2010) and they’re known for work on mRNA therapeutics (we’re discussing vaccines now, but mRNA can also be (potentially) used to replace or supplement proteins) They have never brought a product to market or even to Phase III clinical trials, but they have a number of them at various stages in the clinical development pipeline (the furthest-along is a vaccine for CytoMegaloVirus (CMV), which is in Phase 2 & includes mRNA recipes for making the CMV pentamer complex & glycoprotein B (gB) protein which are important for cellular entry of that virus.
For SARS-CoV-2, they decided to stick in the recipe for the coronavirus’ Spike (S) protein because this is the one that binds to cellular receptors – if you wanna make neutralizing antibodies, this is the guy you wanna hit. They made a couple of minor tweaks to the recipe to make a couple corresponding protein letter (amino acid) changes in order to stabilize the resulting S protein in the “pre-fusion conformation” (the shape it takes before binding to the receptor, shape-shifting and fusing with the cell membrane in order to dump its contents out into our cells). They named it mRNA-1273 and, after promising pre-clinical results, including the finding that it was effective at inducing protective antibodies in mice – they started their Phase 1 trial.
This trial was small (as is the point of Phase 1 trials – you want to make sure it’s super super safe before you go injecting it into a bunch of people). In this case, there were 45 trial participants, split into 3 dosage groups (the second point of Phase 1 trials is to find the right dosage – here they wanted to find the “goldilocks” dose that would induce strong antibody production without side effects). Note – they were only able to provide partial data for the later timepoints because the trial’s still underway and not everyone got injected on the first day.
Speaking of people getting injected, the trial involved healthy volunteers in the 18-55 age range. They were given either 25μg (micrograms), 100μg, or 250μg, starting with a “prime” injection and with a subsequent booster injection 4 weeks later.
Even at the lowest dose, antibodies for the SARS-CoV-2 S protein appeared in their blood by 15 days, and 2 weeks after the booster shot (43 days after initial injection), the levels of these antibodies were similar to the levels in the blood of people who had actually been infected with, and recovered from, the coronavirus (so-called convalescent sera). For those who’d gotten the 100μg dose, the antibody levels were even higher.
But, all that was just talking about “binding antibodies” – antibodies that can bind to the viral protein and can be detected by ELISA – but the really important question is whether binding to those antibodies actually blocks the virus from infecting cells. To answer this, they did those PRNT tests I was telling you about earlier – they only had data to report for the first 4 injected people in the 25 & 100μg groups (I’m hoping the data for more will be available soon!) – but all 8 of them had neutralizing antibodies in their blood.
They didn’t provide much info about the 250μg dose other than that, after the booster shot, 3 of them developed side-effects like fever, muscle pain, & headaches. With the lower doses – the only side-effect reported was a little redness & soreness at the injection site – in 1 person. All these side-effects resolved themselves and there were no serious “adverse events” – but they decided to ditch the 250μg dose and replace it with a 50μg dose – they’re adding a 50μg group to their Phase 1 trial & they’re also adding additional age groups (55 to 70) & 71+ https://nyti.ms/36b73O8
They got the green light for this Phase 2 trial, which will start soon and include 600 people given 50μg or 100μg doses to see which is best.
Assuming that Phase 2 goes okay, once they figure out the best dose, they’re planning to start Phase 3 trials in July in order to see if it really is effective at preventing infection. This is hard because you need a really large sample size in order to have enough people vaccinated AND exposed to be able to see if the vaccine prevented infection. And you have to follow up and follow up and follow up… Because you don’t know when they might be exposed. To get an earlier indication, you can do “challenge studies” in lab animals where you vaccinate some and don’t vaccinate some (the control group) then you purposely try to infect them and see if they get sick. Moderna did this with mice – and they found that it worked – it prevented the virus from replicating in the mice’s lungs. And, encouragingly, the levels of neutralizing antibodies Moderna found in people where comparable to those we know worked for the mouse. But we don’t know if the same will hold true for humans – and we don’t know how long the immunity will last.
If Phase 3 is successful, the challenge will be ramping up production and delivery. Moderna itself is pretty small and, on its own wouldn’t be up to this monumental task, but on April 16, the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) gave them a big investment to help accelerate development & manufacturing https://cnn.it/2KYDbKQ And they signed a worldwide development agreement with the Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Lonza. https://bit.ly/3d9RkRO
So the early results are promising, but there’s still a long way to go and we have very very little to go off of now – we don’t even have the official phase 1 results, just the press release with midway results. So, be hopeful but hopefully not hyper-hyped. I know it’s easy to latch onto any good news but, unfortunately, we’ve gotta wait and see…
Another note: Moderna may be first, but it isn’t the last – multiple other companies are also developing mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2. BioNTech has deals with Fudan and Pfizer for mRNA vaccines. They’re trying a few different ones – a few have modified RNA letters thought to help make them and a fourth is a “self-amplifying mRNA with has the gene for a replicase protein which makes more copies of the mRNA once inside the cell. https://bit.ly/3d9RkRO
The mRNA technology is really new, so there actually are not yet any FDA-approved mRNA human vaccines for any disease, but hopefully one of these will be the first!
more on the ELISA: https://bit.ly/covid19testtypes
more on PRNT: https://bit.ly/neutralizationtests
more on other vaccine types: https://bit.ly/coronavirusvaccinetypes
more on the vaccine development & approval process: https://bit.ly/coronavirusvaccinetesting
more on clinical trials: https://bit.ly/clinicaltrialterms
more Covid-19 resources: https://bit.ly/covid19bbresources
more on topics mentioned (& others) #365DaysOfScience All (with topics listed) 👉 http://bit.ly/2OllAB0