Category Archives: Physiology

Physiology

Limbo is tackling obesity with a pair of wearables and decades of physiology – TechCrunch

In recent years there has been a flurry of startup activity aimed at commercializing blood glucose biosensors aka, wearable tech that was originally developed for diabetes management. These continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) transmit near real-time data on glucose levels, providing instant feedback (via a companion mobile app) on how the body metabolizes different foods or responds to lifestyle decisions around exercise and sleep.

The biowearables, which are semi-invasive typically worn on the arm with a sensing filament inserted just under the skin were originally developed for diabetics and pre-diabetics who have a medical need to track their blood sugar because of insulin resistance. But the startup gambit is that opening access to CGMs more generally can offer broad health utility by giving all sorts of people a dynamic window onto whats going on with their metabolism.

Some of these startups are selling the idea that biohacking by tracking blood glucose can help people optimize athletic performance, or configure a healthy diet and lifestyle including weight management. But the startup strategy has often fixed on opening up the data window first as a tactic to build product utility while they acquire (and structure) users metabolic and lifestyle data tracking glucose responses to food and lifestyle inputs and, they hope, spotting positive and negative patterns that they can use to synthesize a fitness or healthy lifestyle program.

Limbo, a New York, London and Cork-based startup which is announcing a $6 million seed raise today, is in this growing pack commercializing CGM tech in its case building a subscription weight management business to target the obesity crisis. But it claims to be bringing a distinct approach with a product thats not just a data-mining work in progress; rather, they say, the program is based on some three decades of research undertaken by one of the co-founders chief research officer, Tony Martin, who is a physiologist and coach.

[Martin] essentially worked out the secret of how blood glucose regulated the body and how energy in the body is mediated through blood glucose, says co-founder and CEO, Rurik Bradbury, discussing the startup in a call with TechCrunch. How if you control it in a certain way then you can have very dramatic weight loss results based on biodata.

Martin is not affiliated with any research institutions, nor has he published any scientific papers on his work so its private research and results he was able to obtain using this private methodology with his own clients that Limbo is drawing on for its product.

The big breakthrough came over the last 5-6 years when CGMs came out which allowed him to test a number of hypotheses, explains Bradbury. Both on himself and on his weight loss clients. And what he found was a number of patterns and a number of effects which he could replicate to do with the balance of different macronutrients essentially, and how the body can regulate itself if you reduce carbs and sugars.

Theres nothing hugely secret about that about whats essentially a Keto[ogenic diet] type program. There are many, many different variants of it and what he did was work out the right balance for people on a more individualized basis so it could be implemented as a program with a CGM to steer them in real time.

Now weve got kind of the recipe for how to make this work for people as a platform as opposed to a person by person system, he adds.

Limbos other co-founder Pat Phelan, whose name may be familiar to long-time TechCrunch readers as he exited his ecommerce fraud protection startup Trustev to TransUnion for $44 million back in 2015 has also put himself through the program.

Indeed, the inspiration for Limbo began with Phelans personal weight loss journey after years of jetsetting startup life had not been kind to his health. And it was in looking for help to address his obesity problem that he met Martin who suggested he try his homebrew blood glucose tracking method with a CGMv and then Phelans success with the regime (which he discusses in this video on the startups website) led to the trio of founders coming together to establish a startup to productize Martins program (with Phelan and Bradbury bringing the tech experience gleaned from years working in startups).

Limbo was founded in fall 2020 so its very much a pandemic health tech startup, with the first private beta users starting on the program at the end of 2020.

Target users are people looking to lose 10-15% of their body weight, per Bradbury. While typical customers so far are 35-55 in age range.

The team doesnt have any efficacy studies published quantifying the impact of the weight loss program by, for example, comparing Martins method to other weight management approaches. But Bradbury argues early results speak for themselves with members seeing an average weigh loss of 12% after three months of use. (Phelan himself lost 36kg/81 pounds over 9 months using the prototype.)

The 12% stat was based on an initial paying cohort of 50 users. Limbo now has around 2,000, per Bradbury, who says theyre hoping to have tens of thousand signed up over the coming 12 months.

The program is a subscription service costing 1,500 for three months access, so its definitely premium level pricing.

As well as a supply of CGM sensors to track their blood glucose, Limbo members are sent two additional devices: A wearable wristband that tracks a range of health data (including heart rate, steps, skin and body temperature, blood oxygen); and a smart scale which can measure body fat and muscle mass in different areas of the body so its triangulating a range of signals in order to assess the healthiness (or otherwise) of the users diet and lifestyle; and to track their progress towards their weight goals.

We started with an off the shelf piece of tech [for the wristband]. But we have a customized one built to our specs, says Bradbury, discussing its hardware mix. We have the person who used to run Apple in Asia Rory Sexton on our board, and he was one of the first investors. And he became interested because youve probably seen the rumors that Apple is looking to add blood glucose to [Apple] Watches. But its a very tricky thing. Weve also looked at this ourselves. And theres lot of constraints there as far as how much power it would take and how accurate it is I think it might be a little way off.

But he got interested in that and we did an Apple Watch integration but the challenge with that and all the other tools out there Fitbit and so on is that their data resolutions quite low. So [with our custom hardware] were looking every second or minute at these data points. [Whereas] Apple Watch and other wristbands tend to sample every few minutes to save power because the battery life is tricky.

Limbos smart scale is also customized rather than off-the-shelf kit and Bradbury says it is higher end than consumer smart scales (which can suffer from poor accuracy). But he also says there is less need for high resolution data for the scale (vs the wristband) since its mostly used to track progress over time, not for dynamic feedback on meals etc.

Were looking at a gradual over the course of 3-6 months period of shifting body fat percentage, he says of the scale. Obviously that usually comes down. Thats the main goal of the program. So were looking for a shift over time. Were not looking for a precise, exact moment in time measurements. Were not training, say, boxers for a fight where every ounce counts.

The core interface for Limbos program is of course a mobile app which visualizes the users blood glucose level (via a plotted line), tracking changes continuously; and delivers feedback and nudges to members (via push messages).

Limbo says its using a combination of AI-powered analysis and human coaches looking at users data in order to encourage positive behavioural changes, via feedback and nudges with the overarching goal of steering users towards eating a healthier, balanced diet and away from consuming foods that spike their blood sugar. So the push is to cut back on simple sugars (carbs, processed foods etc).

The user has to do only limited data logging themselves. Theyre asked to snap a picture of whatever theyre eating to log their food intake, with an optional text field to add more details. But Bradbury says adding extra detail isnt required because all the connected hardware enables them to rely on this tracking of the users biological signals to determine what post-meal feedback to provide.

So while the app might not literally know what that dark beverage youre drinking is or, if it looks like a cup of tea, how many sugars you might have slipped into it the data wont lie. If the drink contains unhealthy levels of sugar that spike your glucose the app will pick up that response in the CGM data and nudge you to drink something less sugary next time.

So the user gets continual, dynamic feedback to help them change their diet for the better.

Its a really interesting issue because its both psychological and its data, says Bradbury, discussing the importance of the psychological element. You can show people data you can tell them stuff til youre blue in the face but thats different from having a psychological effect to make them behave in a different way. So the nudges are almost like extra pushes on top of the data. So if someone spikes their blood sugar itll push a message saying what just happened? Essentially you cant cheat on this program.

One of the biggest issues with other diets is compliance. That people quote forget they had that muffin. And no ones the wiser except for them. Whereas you cant cheat on Limbo. Theres automated sensing if something happened. So theres interventions like that where the member knows theyre being watched and they behave accordingly. You cant pull a fast one and sneak something past the system. And secondly there are educational interventions such as the right balance of carbs and sugars and proteins and fats to eat to get to your goal.

So that might be this contained too many carbs, try to reduce sugar content in drinks, that type of thing. Another one might be more positive: Add more protein to the next meal or do something along those lines.

The idea is a coach on your arm that watches you 24/7 and steers you in the right direction, he adds.

But dont we already know that eating sugary processed foods is bad and leads to weight gain, and eating healthy whole, fresh foods is good for us? Why do we need an app to tell us this?

If knowledge were enough to get someone across the finish line we all know these things technically then there wouldnt be an obesity crisis. But the hard thing is that firstly a lot of people dont know exactly what carbs and sugars are and the impact of highly processed foods which are extremely bioavailable which spike you very quickly and directly after eating them. So theres a lot of people who dont really have a clear picture of what food does to them, he suggests.

Secondly weve been served myths for decades or centuries. People think that a sweet piece of fruit is good for you theyve been told its good for you. And theyve taken it for granted. When a glass of orange juice is a cup of sugar. So these pervasive myths throw people off course. And certainly its the willpower thing if you have a coach whos watching you 24/7, whos holding you accountable, steering you in the right direction, educating you on whats actually happening to you inside your body its a very powerful crutch to help people get places.

While the primary focus of Limbos intervention currently is around food, nutrition and diet, Bradbury notes the app will also nudge users to take some low intensity exercise such as a post meal walk as another tactic to flatten the curve (aka get glucose level back into the target zone). And he says theyre planning to put more focus on how activity affects blood glucose as they continue developing the product.

If you eat something that has too high carb and sugar content the app will often pop up and say now would be a good time to take a [low intensity exercise] walk so its not about sending people to the gym and spin class and so on. Its much more about a smaller, more manageable amounts of exercise that complement the food choices, he says of the current Limbo experience.

One of the big lies that have been sold to people is that you have to go to the gym and sweat your way out of extra weight. Its very, very hard to exercise off a poor diet, he adds. Or an imbalance of energy coming into the body that is expended. So most of the nudges are about food and diet.

The priority for the seed funding is product development. We havent really spent any money on marketing and weve let things spread by word of mouth because I think people are quite mistrustful of marketing for anything to do with diets and food its a space where theres so much snake oil sold and dodgy businesses so were basically just showcasing what people have done or the weight theyve lost with this and having them spread the word themselves, he tells us.

So rather than spend lots of money on marketing were putting that into the AI, the analytics and the product side so were building out teams to make the product broader. Theres lots of things we can do more on in terms of sleep and exercise. Lots of the focus is on food but they all interact with each other so were building out an experience to showcase to members how those things interact in a visual way.

Limbo is also working towards a U.S. launch in the second half of next year, per Bradbury.

Obesity is of course a global problem so the team sees huge potential for scaling, while cautioning that they dont want to grow so quickly they lose the quality of individualized advice, as Bradbury puts it. (For a sense of scale, Limbos team is currently 18 people who are supporting around 2k members.)

On the competition front, while there are a growing number of CGM players seeking to tempt consumers with a glimpse of their metabolic health indeed, even CGM maker Abbott is itself getting into the game Bradbury argues Limbos approach of productizing an existing weight loss program as an app (rather than trying to develop a methodology off of CGM data) gives it an edge.

Hence he also argues that Limbos competition is closer to a more radical obesity intervention like gastric bypass surgery than what other startups are offering.

That said, U.S. startup January AI also has a lot of research underpinning its food-response focused program, while Indias Healthify which is due to launch a premium CGM offering in the U.S. next year already has years of fitness data under its belt (and the latters Pro offering similarly combines CGM, smart scale plus in-app coaching), to name two. So Limbo certainly isnt the only solid-looking CGM weight loss game in town.

Asked about its pricing strategy which is a major mark-up on most CGM competitors Bradbury again says its a reflection of the proven program and accessible approach its offering.

As far as weve seen so far all of the other companies started with the idea of well what if we could give CGMs to everyone? And then well look at the data and see what we can find, he says. So we took the opposite approach Weve already done the 30 years research beforehand so we know what happens when someone wears a CGM, we know how to steer them into better choices.

So while we look similar to some other CGM companies were starting from a very different position. Were implementing a pre-existing, prescriptive program do this, do that, do this, and you will lose weight. So thats a very big difference in terms of the experience of the program and people will, I think, pay for results.

Aside from premium pricing, there is the challenge of convincing users to stick a sensor in their arm. Wearing a CGM can look daunting, given its a semi-invasive sensor that requires both pricking your skin and living with a filament in your arm for weeks at a time, but Bradbury says the team hasnt so far had a problem getting people to get comfy with biowearables.

He suggests target customers are simply so motivated to achieve their weight loss goals and so tired of trying diets that are miserable and havent helped them that theyre happy to try something different where they get to see data and track their results, even if it means getting comfortable with firing a gadget into their arm every two weeks.

Still, the first 2,000 or so Limbo members may be especially motivated due to repeat failure to shift weight other ways. So it will be interesting to see whether its early adopters are outliers in being so easy for it to onboard, i.e. owing to having stubborn weight issues and whether broader scaling will be more challenging.

Limbos price-point is certainly one hard limit.

On the other hand, the lure of real-time health data is undoubtedly powerful and if its method of bite-sized insights plus wraparound support which does the hard work by translating sometimes confusing metabolic signals into simple actions people can take to improve their lifestyles then its easy to imagine big appetite for a smart but simple diet tool.

A lot of people start the program and its not for 3-4 weeks that their blood sugar ever gets into the standard zone and thats because for the 10-15 years prior they were eating carbs and sugars so often and so much that their body systems were beaten down and overwhelmed and they were constantly fighting to lower the sugar but with insulin resistance and so on they couldnt do it, says Bradbury of Limbos experience with early members. But after 3-4 weeks with an intense [effort] in pushing youll find that that member gets into the blue for the first time.

What the system really is is letting people conscientiously engage with their bodies and thats something thats almost impossible with food because you cant just put your finger on your pulse and measure your blood glucose So if we can visualize this for people and coach them on what they see it can have a big effect.

Its a virtuous cycle we try to set up for them, he adds. Youll see a bad result if you have a[n unhealthy] snack and then youll know thats going to happen. So, over time, people unwind those snacking habits. Its also the effect of them seeing what is happening inside their body. You can eat a cookie or a muffin or something and you can ignore it. But when you see it in front of you in the app this spike happening and the crash afterwards its a very different thing [vs the traditional experience of dieting] in terms of a feedback cycle, a feedback loop to change your decision next time.

Limbos seed round is led by Hoxton Ventures. Other backers include (the former NBA basketball player) Shaquille ONeal, Seedcamp, (former Apple exec) Rory Sexton, (rugby player) Jamie Heaslip, and co-founders at a number of tech firms including Intercom, PCH International, Yelp, Voxpro, and Web Summit.

This report was updated with a correction: We originally misstated the price of Limbos plan its 1,500 for three months, not 1,300 as we originally reported

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Limbo is tackling obesity with a pair of wearables and decades of physiology - TechCrunch

Physiology

Integrative Physiology | University of Colorado Boulder

At the Department of Integrative Physiology we study organisms as functioning systems of molecules, cells, tissues, and organs. This emphasis on whole-body function, and its applications to human health and disease, has made Integrative Physiology the largest undergraduate major at CU-Boulder. Our PhD program was recently ranked 9th out of 63 physiology programs in the country. Our diverse faculty include several who have joint affiliations with the Institute for Behavioral Genetics and the Center for Neuroscience, as well as clinical divisions at the CU-Anschutz medical campus.

For a video introduction to the Department and our mission/vision and diversity statements, see the About Us page.

Excerpt from:
Integrative Physiology | University of Colorado Boulder

Physiology

From Africa to the Roman Empire: New Study Reveals 7,000 Years of Donkey Domestication – Horse Network

Be they ever so humble, theres no creature quite like the donkey.

Though these hairy, hardy decedents of the Equidae family are often thought of as the horses slightly quirky cousins from Albuquerque, they have earned their place as our counterparts in civilizationfrom their role in Biblical tales to modern DreamWorks classics (hello,Shrek!).

As turns out, though, donkeys may be far more than that. And thanks to new research from the University of Florida, we now know humans wouldnt have gotten very far without them. Literally.

Donkeys have been important to humans for thousands of years, being the primary source of work and transport for many cultures. Unlike horses, little was known about the origin and domestication of donkeys, the study says. Understanding their genetic makeup is not only key to assessing their contribution to human history but also to improving their local management in the future.

To that end, a global team of 49 researchers managed to sequence the genome of the donkey from multiple regions around the world, comparing the makeup of more than 200 modern and more than 30 ancient donkeys, along with 15 wild horses.

Using both DNA analysis and fossilized remains, the team discovered that donkeys were likely first domesticated around 5000 BCE in Africa by herding peoples, spurred by the large-scale aridification of the Sahara Desert. This is in direct contrast to horses, which were actually domesticated by humans on two occasions after the first try failed. (We assume early man was attempting to work exclusively with small ponies at the time).

Domestication is a really neat natural experiment, said Samantha Brooks, an associate professor of equine physiology at the University of Florida. How we use animals in our day-to-day lives changes the physiology of these animals. Watching this across thousands of years of genetic history was really fascinating. These changes illustrate how the unique physiology of the domesticated donkey gave them the tools needed to survive and thrive as they worked and lived alongside humans.

Whats more, by understanding the movement of donkeys throughout history, the study also reflects human movement and activities, including the transport of goods, animal husbandry methods, and how donkeys were selected for unique traits to pass down. A primary example: A group of donkey genomes pulled from the remains of a Roman settlement in Boinville-en-Wovre, in northeastern France, which showed that donkeys in that region may have been selectively bred to produce certain coat colors, including dun.

This is an exception from the rest of Roman France, however, where mules were the dominant animal species used. According to the study,during this period,the Romans may have imported additional, larger-stature donkeys from Western Africa to breed mules of greater size, which they could then use to fuel transportation networks throughout the Empire.

Donkeys have fueled human agriculture throughout early history, and they continue to do so across the globe, especially in developing nations, Brooks explained. Donkeys are extremely hearty animals, theyre real survivors, and were excited to learn more about the adaptations [that] gave them what it takes to survive.

And, according to Brooks, the evolutionary trajectory of the donkey may also hold the key to thriving in our own, quickly changing world. A better understanding of how [donkeys] got their toughness [teaches] us a lot about animal physiology and gives us new ideas on what it might take to adapt our livestock populations to survive in a warming climate, she said.

You can access the full study hee-haw!

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From Africa to the Roman Empire: New Study Reveals 7,000 Years of Donkey Domestication - Horse Network

Physiology

Study sheds light on how heat stress affects kidney function – News-Medical.Net

Acute kidney injury-; defined as an abrupt decline in glomerular filtration rate (GFR)-;is among the top causes of hospitalization during a heat wave. New research published ahead of print in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology sheds light on how heat stress affects kidney function. The study was chosen as an APSselect article for September.

The findings of the present study support that GFR reserve is utilized to maintain GFR during mild passive heat stress in young healthy adults.

Under normal conditions, the kidneys have a reserve of untapped function they can draw on in the event of greater physiological need. The capacity to increase function is called the GFR reserve. One way to study GFR reserve is to monitor levels of a waste product called creatinine for a few hours after eating a high-protein meal.

For the current study, 16 healthy adults completed two versions of such a trial, one under normal heat conditions and the other under mild heat stress. After collecting baseline readings of kidney function, researchers gave each participant a whey protein shake and monitored them for two and a half hours.

The research team found that creatinine levels were elevated after drinking the shake in the normal temperature trial but not in the heat stress trial. This indicates that the participants' kidneys were not able to increase their filtration rate to the same degree when faced with mild heat stress as they did at a normal temperature. They likely used their reserve to maintain a reduced degree of function.

This study sheds light on a likely mechanism for the increase in kidney injury during heat waves. The authors note that those known to be at greater risk for kidney damage during heat waves tend to also be populations known to have reduced GFR reserves, such as older adults.

Source:

Journal reference:

Freemas, J.A., et al. (2022) Glomerular filtration rate reserve is reduced during mild passive heat stress in healthy young adults. American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. doi.org/10.1152/ajpregu.00090.2022.

Link:
Study sheds light on how heat stress affects kidney function - News-Medical.Net

Physiology

Examining stress and the human body – News Center – The University of Texas at Arlington – uta.edu

Friday, Sep 23, 2022 Neph Rivera : Contact

Ashley Darling (left) and Jody Greaney

Youre stuck in traffic. Youve spilled coffee on yourself. Youve forgotten your phone at home.

These may seem like small annoyances by themselves. But the stress they can cause on the body has the potential to accumulate. A team of University of Texas at Arlington researchers is exploring how those day-to-day stresses of life may impact ones health.

Ashley Darling, doctoral student and graduate research assistant at UTAs Neurovascular Physiology Laboratory, under the supervision of Jody Greaney, assistant professor of kinesiology and lab director, is studying how daily stress can play a role in ones risk of cardiovascular disease.

Daily stress is universally experienced. Its part of life and elicits an emotional response. Typically, people get into a worse mood as a result of these daily stressors, Darling said. What weve seen is that a greater increase in negative mood is correlated with biological outcomes that may lead to an increased risk of future cardiovascular disease.

Darlings project is The moderating influence of physical activity on the link between daily stress vulnerability and blood pressure reactivity. It received grant funding from the American College of Sports Medicine Foundation.

Darling said stress activates the sympathetic nervous system, which drives the bodys fight or flight response. With that activation comes an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. The blood pressure spike from that acute stress previously has been linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

But Darling says there is a way to fight back: by being active. She and her team are investigating whether physical activity can help lower the bodys reaction to acute stress, thereby decreasing the bodys disease risk.

We are always interested in physical activity and sedentary time. It is such an accessible and very powerful intervention, Darling said. Trying to understand how public health initiatives could be created to promote exercise went into the decision to pursue this study.

Participants will wear a small accelerometer on their hip for a week that will record their physical activity and sedentary time. They will also document their exposure to daily stress and their emotional response to that stress. On the studys final day, participants will visit the lab and undergo exposure to acute laboratory-applied stressful tasks, like submerging their hand in a bucket of ice water, to see how their blood pressure levels react.

Darling said she is grateful for research experience at UTA and the mentorship of Greaney.

I moved here from Virginia specifically for UTA and to work with Jody, just because I think the University really does offer a great amount of resources, Darling said. The department and the people whom I am able to work with give me a unique set of skills that I cant really get from other places.

Greaney said that Darlings research approach is unique.

Very few investigators are working at merging psychology and psychological-related outcomes with physiology, Greaney said. Ashley has done a really nice job of building a team of investigators that is going to help her be successful in completing this study.

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Examining stress and the human body - News Center - The University of Texas at Arlington - uta.edu

Physiology

Breakthrough prize recognizes discovery at MBL of new organizing principle in cells – EurekAlert

image:Clifford Brangwynne at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass., on August 2 2022. Brangwynne and Anthony Hyman made the initial dsicovery of condensate formation in the MBL Physiology course in 2008. They have received the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for this research. view more

Credit: Dee Sullivan

WOODS HOLE, Mass. The discovery of a fundamental way for cells to organize internally, first recognized in the 2008 Physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), has been honored by the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences awarded to Anthony Hyman and Clifford Brangwynne, then instructors in the course.

The Breakthrough Prize, renowned as the Oscars of Science, are presented annually in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics to recognize the worlds top scientists working in the fundamental sciences the disciplines that ask the biggest questions and find the deepest explanations. Laureates receive a $3 million prize and are honored at a globally broadcast awards ceremony (date to be announced).

Brangwynne, Hyman, MBL Physiology course students, and colleagues solved a longstanding mystery of how cells create order in the millions of molecules that zip around within their boundaries. As they observed in nematode worms in the course, and later confirmed as a general principle, cells spontaneously form liquid-like droplets that concentrate some molecules in a membrane-free drop, while excluding others. These condensates, which usually contain protein and RNA, form by a phase separation process, similar to water vapor condensing into dew.

This observation ended up having major reverberations. Since 2008, evidence has mounted that condensates regulate many critical cellular processes, from cell division to gene expression, and are involved in the development of diseases that include cancer, neurodegenerative disease, Covid-19, and others. Several biotech companies have formed to pursue medical applications of condensate research.

The MBL is the birthplace of this field, because so much happened here, Brangwynne says, including foundational discoveries that issued from a collaborative, five-year initiative at the MBL (2013-2017) funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. (See timeline of phase separation discovery research at MBL here.)

The discovery of biomolecular condensates has fundamentally changed how we think about cellular processes and disease, said MBL Director Nipam Patel. It is a tribute to the tremendous value of the MBLs education and training programs that the original observation was in the Physiology course, and that in the decade to follow, many scientists associated with the MBL vastly extended the observation and pioneered a new field of study.

The Breakthrough Prize was founded in 2013 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.

The laureates honored today embody the remarkable power of fundamental science, said Yuri Milner, both to reveal deep truths about the Universe, and to improve human lives.

The 2023 laureates have produced absolutely stellar science, said Wojcicki. The creativity, ingenuity and sheer perseverance that went into this work is awe-inspiring.

###

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery exploring fundamental biology, understanding marine biodiversity and the environment, and informing the human condition through research and education. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution and an affiliate of the University of Chicago.

Other resources:

Clifford Brangwynnes Friday Evening Lecture at MBL (2021)

Brangwynnes Research at the MBL, Summer of 2022

Description of the Original Discovery in the Physiology course

MBL Press Release on Physiology Course Discovery (2009)

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Breakthrough prize recognizes discovery at MBL of new organizing principle in cells - EurekAlert

Physiology

Why professional runners can be disqualified for starting a race after the gun – Vox.com

In July, TyNia Gaither lined up in the second lane for one of her biggest races of the year: the semifinals of the 100-meter dash at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

The 29-year-old Bahamian sprinter crouched down into the starting blocks. The crowd grew quiet. She waited for the sound.

I heard the gun go off, and I took off, Gaither says. And then I heard the gun go off again.

That second bang meant officials had stopped the race. Someone had false-started, and Gaither was surprised to find out it was her.

I thought it was an error, she says. Ive never false-started ever in my life.

Per the rules, Gaither was immediately disqualified. When she tried to contest the call to the race official, he showed her a replay. It didnt show a visible false start. But then he pointed to a number, lit up in red: 0.093 seconds, the amount of time it took for Gaither to start after the gun fired.

Yes: She had started after the gun went off, and was still thrown out of the race.

Im mind-blown, she recalls thinking. Youre telling me Im penalized for something I did after the gun went off!?

Theres a peculiar rule in top-level running that says if a runner starts within 0.1 seconds of the gun, theyve broken the rules. The assumption made by World Athletics, the organization behind this championship, is that it is physiologically impossible to start that quickly.

What they were trying to tell us, Gaither says on Unexplainable Voxs podcast about unanswered questions is that no human can possibly move that fast.

Any racer who does is presumed to have anticipated the gun, meaning their brains gave the go signal to their bodies before they heard the sound.

But is that true? What is the fastest possible human reaction time to a sound?

The answer could vindicate Gaither, who feels unfairly labeled as a cheater there was no guessing in my start, she says emphatically and other athletes who have been similarly disqualified for starting too quickly.

But this question also leads to bigger ones near the heart of the sport. Competitions like track ought to reveal the limits of human abilities, to push through previously assumed boundaries. But, here, World Athletics seems to have set a limit that might actually be holding its athletes back.

What would be better? Does racing, along with other sports, need greater scientific precision, a better understanding of human physiology? Or does it just need to accept that there may not be a perfect way to define, and record, a race?

According to scientists, the basic idea behind the 0.1 second rule does make some sense.

Human beings cannot react instantaneously to a sound, says Matthieu Milloz, a biomechanics scientist at the University of Limerick in Ireland who is completing his PhD on recording race starts. A long chain of physical and physiological events have to occur, and each component takes time: The sound of the gun has to travel to a runners ears, the ears translate the sound into a neurological signal, the signal has to be recognized by the nervous system, the nervous system has to send a command to start down to the muscles, the muscles take time to contract, and so on.

A wily racer could get a jump on this process. You can anticipate the gun, Milloz says. Races can be won or lost by hundredths, even thousandths of a second. So an early start can give a runner an advantage.

What doesnt make much sense to scientists is the number World Athletics says is the neurophysiological limit. Currently, we dont know what this neurophysiological limit is, Milloz says. But what I can say is that the 100-millisecond [0.1 second] threshold is not science-based. We dont have the data.

Thats not to say there havent been any studies. The studies on sprint starts tend to be small, and they dont always use the most elite athletes as subjects. If scientists arent testing the very fastest sprint starters in the world, how would they know what the very edge of the limit is?

A 1990 Finnish study on eight non-elite sprinters is often cited, and this study did find evidence to support a 0.1 second limit. But other studies have recorded sprinters starting faster than that perhaps even faster than 0.085 seconds. Other scientists have done some back-of-the-napkin calculations accounting for how long it takes for a signal to traverse the ears, nerves, and muscles, and concluded that start times faster than 0.1 second are possible.

Im sure that you can react in less than 100 milliseconds, Milloz says, noting hes recorded it himself in unpublished work. Yet he doesnt know what the exact number ought to be.

World Athletics has maintained that the 0.1 second rule is based on the science on standard reaction times.

Other sources disagree. Sports historian PJ Vazel, who wrote a report on the history of reaction time for the IAAF (the former name of World Athletics), says this rule actually dates back to the 1960s, and a West German sprinter named Armin Hary.

Hary was known as the Thief of Starts, due to his suspiciously fast starting times in sprint races. Its unclear whether Hary anticipated the gun, or just had a very fast reaction time (some tests indicated the latter was the case). He was constantly starting faster than the others, Vazel says. There was controversy. Enough so that West Germany pushed for an automated system to be built into starting blocks themselves to measure false starts.

West Germany worked with the watch company Junghans, which developed the blocks. According to their patent, the company says they performed tests which found that sprinters were not starting faster than 0.1 seconds. That limit became a rough rule of thumb for the next few decades, Vazel explains, until it was officially codified in 1989. Its unfortunate, Vazel says, that people still think this rule was founded on a scientific basis. It was not.

Scientific in the purest sense of the word would mean allowing outside researchers to verify the findings in an open and consistent manner.

When Milloz says he doesnt know what the limit is, its because there is no gold standard, he says, on how to study this. Small changes to the experimental setup what type of sensors are used, how they are calibrated can yield different answers.

Scientists arent even sure how, precisely, the official recording systems are calibrated. According to Milloz and colleagues writing in the journal Sports Medicine, The precise details of event detection algorithms [i.e how the starting blocks record a start] are not made public by SIS [start information system] manufacturers.

On top of that, variables like how loud the sound of the gun is, and how long runners have to wait before the starting gun is fired can all influence their speed. (Both a louder gun, and a longer wait tend to result in faster starts.) Ideally, World Athletics and outside scientists could agree on how to control for all this.

Vazel says World Athletics needs to be more transparent around how the machines actually calculate their results. In fact, there is reason to believe that the sensors at the World Championships in Eugene may have been recording faster reaction times than normal.

Gaither wasnt the only runner at the World Championships to be disqualified for starting after the gun. Julien Alfred was disqualified for starting 0.095 seconds after the gun, and Devon Allen was disqualified for starting 0.099 seconds after the gun, just one thousandth of a second too quickly.

We reached out to World Athletics about why the 0.1 second rule has not been changed when scientific studies have shown runners can react more quickly.

They stand by it. According to World Athletics, The 100ms rule was initially set as it was determined to be the minimum auditory reaction time.

We pointed out that World Athletics even commissioned its own study on reaction times in 2009, which determined that the limit should be lowered from 0.1 second.

When we asked why that didnt prompt a change, World Athletics replied, The Technical Committee felt that the study, which was carried out using only six non-elite athletes, was not sufficiently robust to warrant a change.

So round and round we go. Scientists say there isnt data to support keeping the 0.1 second rule. And here World Athletics is saying there isnt data to throw it out either.

At least one World Athletics council member has called for a rule change. It is standard procedure after each world championships for the World Athletics Competition Commission to review the championships and recommend any rule changes, World Athletics told us.

Basically: Theyre looking into it. Like they say they do every year.

In the meantime, one thing seems clear: We dont know how fast a runner can start, but it seems likely to be faster than 0.1 seconds.

Theres some evidence that the 0.1 second limit and the strict rules surrounding it might be holding racers back from starting as fast as possible. Over the years, the costs of false starting have increased. Its now the case that a single false start can get a runner disqualified from a race. As the rules have grown stricter, studies suggest racers have started more cautiously. One study found starts in international championships slowed down by 20 percent from 1997 to 2011.

So whats the answer here? Milloz thinks the sport could benefit from more science and standardization. He would like to bring the top athletes in the world to a lab to test their fastest possible starts on machines and with methods that all stakeholders can agree are the gold standard for the sport and science. Gather a lot of response times, Milloz says. And try to plot the distribution, to more clearly see what time would be an unacceptable outlier.

But even then, there could still be some questions about the start of a race. Often in sports, the more you zoom into a moment with technology, the more complicated calls become. When you look more closely at starts, Milloz says, youll find the first parts of the body to move after the gun goes off are not the feet on the starting blocks, but the hands, pushing off the ground. Might it be fairer to record starts from the hands, and not the feet? Milloz says the hands can start moving 50 milliseconds before the feet.

But why stop at the hands? Might a more perfect start detection system, in the future, actually tap into a racers brain to see when they first gave their body the motor command to run? Deciding how to record the start of a race comes with some choices to make about when and where it starts.

There is no perfect way to record something, Milloz says. Every estimate will come with some range of error, or with some careful choices to make. There is always some limitation.

Perhaps anticipating the gun could be a part of the sport. But from our reporting, this seems like an unpopular idea that would lead to more false starts, more race restarts, and messier races overall. Perhaps World Athletics could encourage officials to have more discretion to overrule the computerized start system when the margins are tiny. But then, with discretion, comes inconsistency.

Ultimately, even if a lower reaction time threshold is set depending on where and how its set its still possible someone could come along one day and break it.

Each choice here comes with a compromise.

The idea of perfect fairness in sports may simply be impossible. Theres no way to make sports perfectly fair, says sports writer Joe Posnanski. What you want to do is make it fair enough that people have faith in it.

At the very least, World Athletics can start by making the reaction time limit lower than 0.1 seconds. Given that race starts may always be a gray area, it may be impossible to prevent all false accusations of cheating. But hopefully it will at least be possible to lower the number of athletes unfairly disqualified.

Since the World Championships, Gaithers false start has weighed on her. Ive kind of been experiencing a little PTSD with it, she says, calling the incident embarrassing. Now, when I get to my blocks, the only thing that Im thinking about in my blocks is be patient. Thats literally the thing thats been engraved in my head since that moment. Be patient because you cant afford for that to happen again.

We told Gaither a synopsis of our reporting: That its scientifically plausible she started that quickly. I really appreciate that, she says.

Our sport, she says, is nowhere near perfect. But loving it means wanting to see it get better. Im one of the true lovers of this sport, she says. And, you know, as big of a blow as that was, it hasnt changed.

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Why professional runners can be disqualified for starting a race after the gun - Vox.com

Physiology

Reply to: Revisiting life history and morphological proxies for early mammaliaform metabolic rates – Nature.com

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Reply to: Revisiting life history and morphological proxies for early mammaliaform metabolic rates - Nature.com

Physiology

Is It Dangerous To Drink Beverages That Contain Sodium Benzoate? – Tasting Table

It sure is. Sodium benzoate is a powder that's made by combining benzoic acid with lye, also called sodium hydroxide. This combination does not occur in nature, but benzoic acid can be found in some fruits, plants, and fermented foods.

On its own, sodium benzoate is harmless. What causes trouble is when it's added to products containing vitamin C or ascorbic acid, as it's commonly called on food labels. When these two substances meet, they can turn into benzene, a known carcinogen. This combination is commonly found in soft drinks and is particularly a concern with diet sodas as sugar seems to blunt some of the negative effects of the duo. (via FBC Industries).

In addition to possibly forming a carcinogen, a 2016 study published in Physiology International linked the additive to tissue inflammation. A 2014 study published in Sage Journal found a correlation between sodium benzoate consumption and ADHD. A decrease in leptin, which controls appetite, was concluded in a 2011 study from the British Journal of Nutrition, and free radical formation resulted in a 2014 study via Scientific World Journal.

While deemed safe in specific amounts by the FDA, and more studies are needed to draw further conclusions on any purported dangers, it's always best to do your due diligence and read labels when your health is at stake.

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Is It Dangerous To Drink Beverages That Contain Sodium Benzoate? - Tasting Table

Physiology

ExPath Grad Student Madeline Mayday Awarded Grant from the NIDDK Cooperative Centers of Excellence in Hematology – Yale School of Medicine

Madeline Mayday, BS, a fourth-year Experimental Pathology graduate student in the Laboratory of Diane Krause, MD, PhD, was recently awarded a 2022 National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases Hematology Centers Program Type B Pilot and Feasibility grant for her project entitled, Investigation of RBM15 and the m6A Epitranscriptome in Megakaryopoiesis.

The NIDDK is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. The NIDDK Hematology Centers Program provides a novel support mechanism for researchers to pursue new directions in benign hematology. The grants are designed to support innovative pilot research projects in benign hematology, including the generation of preliminary data for larger research grants.

Madeline is a PhD candidate in the Department of Pathology and is part of the Medical Research Scholars Program. She is originally from Muskoka, Ontario, and graduated with a BS in Cell and Molecular Biology from San Francisco State University. She then worked as a Research Associate at UCSF to develop a protocol for detection of pathogens causing respiratory failure in pediatric HSC transplant patients.

Madeline began her graduate studies in the Translational Molecular Medicine, Pharmacology and Physiology (TMMPP) program at Yale in Fall 2019 and joined the Krause Lab in May 2022 with an interest in translational research and hematopoiesis.

Submitted by Terence P. Corcoran on September 20, 2022

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ExPath Grad Student Madeline Mayday Awarded Grant from the NIDDK Cooperative Centers of Excellence in Hematology - Yale School of Medicine