Professional sports are full of stories of elite athletes choking emotionally and mentally under the pressure of competition. One famous example is golfer Greg Norman, who was leading the 1994 US Masters by six strokes at the beginning of the final round, but then lost by five strokes to Nick Faldo. And England football teams are well known for their struggles in penalty shoot outs.

But the occasion I remember most vividly was watching the late, great Jana Novotna facing Steffi Graf in the 1993 Wimbledon final. Having dominated the match, and leading the final set 4-1, Novotna served a double fault. After this simple error, Novotnas match fell apart, and she ended up quickly losing the set 6-4. It was as if someone had flipped a switch, turning her from elite professional into nervous club player.

Many of us who have played a sport can sympathize with the phenomenon of choking. And as a sports psychologist, I am interested in what happens mentally during those crucial moments before catastrophic drops in performance. Understanding the processes and factors involved could allow us to develop ways to help athletes avoid choking, or regain control after it takes hold.

Researchers have shown how performance anxiety can be split into a mental (cognitive) component, represented by worry (I am worried that I may not perform as well as I can) and self-focused attention (I am conscious of every movement I make), and a physiological anxiety represented by arousal (fast heart rate) and tension (feeling on edge).

The ability to respond positively to anxiety reflects the level of control the athlete feels they have over a given situation, and their own response (I believe I have the resources to meet this challenge). This perception of control is important, because it reflects whether athletes see the situation as a threat or a challenge, which ultimately might change the way they perform.

Many anxiety interventions focus on ways in which we can control our physiology to ensure that athletes keep a cool head. The simplest of all relaxation strategies is slow diaphragmatic breathing, similar to that used in meditation and yoga. We now know that breathing in this way can have a number of benefits.

The most obvious benefit is the immediate effect upon our physiology. If you feel yourself becoming stressed, you will notice how your heart rate increases and your breathing becomes more shallow and sporadic. Concentrating on your breathing and aiming to slow it down will reduce your heart rate and make you feel more calm and in control.

This type of breathing allows us to hijack the bodys natural blood pressure regulation system and to increase our heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is the varying interval in our heart rate, where an increase is reflective of a greater capacity to deal with stress.

This is because our heart is required to adapt appropriately and quickly to environmental demands (from a state of rest to a fight response, say), in order to drive other physiological systems such as the delivery of oxygen to the muscles. If your heart can go from slow to fast and back again quickly, you are more adaptable to the demands you may face, moment by moment.

In our work with elite athletes, we use a technique called HRV biofeedback. For this, we ask athletes to pace their breathing at around six breaths per minute, while providing visual feedback of the effect this has on the heart.

This breathing rate automatically results in a synchronization between breathing and heart rate, such that our heart rate increases on inhaling, and decreases on exhaling. This coherence, technically known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia, naturally increases heart rate variability, while decreasing blood pressure and lowering our average heart rate.

Our aim in using HRV biofeedback is to teach athletes to control their breathing without a visual guide. Then, when they feel under pressure, they have a go-to intervention which helps them return to their ideal performance state. It also allows them to focus on what is important in the environment and in their mindpositive, logical, helpful, and controllable thinking.

Our athletes have found this technique helpful, both preparing for, and during competition, and we are beginning to use it in very specific contexts such as the taper period in elite swimming. The taper period is the final training phase (two to three weeks) before an important competition such as the Olympics, where athletes reduce the volume of training they are doing. This a period of emotional turmoil for swimmersand we are looking at how we can address this with HRV biofeedback.

But the benefits of HRV biofeedback are not reserved for elite athletes. Modern life is stressful for everyone, with many sources of hassle at work and home. Evidence indicates that adopting a regular, long-term schedule of breathing practice at around six breaths per minute for 10 minutes every day could help improve the bodys ability to manage stress.

Simple breathing pacer apps on smartphones, or cheap heart rate monitors, can be used to practice becoming more aware of your breathing, and controlling your heart rate. In times of pressure and amid the stresses of modern life, anyone can breathe to win.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read more:
The ultimate hack to fight performance anxiety - Quartz

There's much excitement in Cognac, France, as an ancient art produces an innovation

08 December 2019 - 00:00 By

Cognac is a secretive place. I feel this as I walk along the cobblestone streets of the small French village, exceptional only because every few blocks there are grand Cognac Houses that hold, in underground cellars, the classified recipes of each particular brand. So when I'm invited into one of these cellars by the cellar master of the oldest cognac maker in the world, on the premise that he's going to share some of his secrets with me, I follow him, without question, through the mouldy tunnels and into his lair.

Christophe Valtaud, Martell cellar master, was born in Cognac, the great-grandson of wine growers and distillers of the region. He tells me that when he was five, his grandfather started taking him into the cognac cellars where he fell in love with the scent of the amber liquid. A magician and alchemist before a scientist (with a degree in biochemistry, molecular biology and plant physiology), Valtaud, whose soul is part of the cognac soil, has been cellar master at Martell for the past three years...

Go here to see the original:
Martell's new Chanteloup XXO is a blend of 450 'waters of life' - TimesLIVE

Though prolonged sitting is associated with a variety of consequences, it may not impair the bodys ability to deliver oxygen to the brain in healthy adults, according to new preliminary research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The UNC Cardiometabolic Lab has a particular interest in understanding the mechanisms by which repeated exposure to prolonged sitting leads to chronic cardiovascular complications. And by cardiovascular we have to remember that this includes cerebrovascular, said study author Lee Stoner, an assistant professor of exercise physiology.

We were originally interested on the effects of prolonged sitting on heart health, and a natural extension was the brain. This is particularly important when considering the epidemiological evidence associating sedentary behaviors with dementia risk factors.

Further, cerebrovascular complications likely contribute to dementia, and theres a clear need to identify strategies to offset dementia risk in the aging population, Stoner explained.

The researchers used nearinfrared spectroscopy to monitor perfusion or penetration of blood into tissue in the prefrontal cortex in 20 healthy participants as they sat for three hours. However, this continuous sitting did not lead to impairments in prefrontal cortex oxygen delivery.

Contrary to expected, we found the prolonged sitting did not decrease cerebral perfusion or executive function. Further, simple exercises such as calf raises during prolonged sitting may not be of benefit to the cerebral perfusion or executive function in healthy young adults, Stoner explained.

But additional research using at-risk populations such as older adults and those with chronic disease should be conducted.

This initial study investigated healthy, young adults. We do not know whether our findings extend to older and/or unhealthy adults. The executive function test we used, Stroop test, may not be the most sensitive for use in young adults, Stoner said.

We measured cerebral perfusion but not cerebral blood flow. Cerebral blood flow may have been compromised (as shown by another study), but the brain worked over time to regulate perfusion.

The study, Effects of acute prolonged sitting on cerebral perfusion and executive function in young adults: A randomized crossover trial, was authored by Lee Stoner, Quentin Willey, William S. Evans, Kathryn Burnet, Daniel P. Credeur, Simon Fryer, and Erik D. Hanson.

Visit link:
Prolonged sitting might not harm oxygen levels in the brain in young adults - PsyPost

Several Jamestown Community College faculty members were honored with Applauding Participation in the Learning Environment (ApPLE) awards this fall.

ApPLE recognizes scholarly research, grant awards, professional honors, creative presentations, and publication credits achieved by faculty. Recipients included:

Essays by English professor Karen Weyant were published in About Place, Barren Magazine, Lake Effect, MARY: A New Journal of Writing, Potomac Review, Solidago Review, and Stitch.

Heather Burrell, assistant professor of nursing, was elected president of the board of directors of the Competency & Credentialing Institute, a perioperative organization for nursing.

Simone Sellstrom, assistant professor and director of media, visual, and performing arts, completed the second edition of her book, Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses, for use by the Small Business Development Center of New York.

Compositions created by associate professor and coordinator of music Neil Flory were performed at several universities and colleges. His Sonata for Euphonium and Piano was published in March.

Associate professor and director of teacher education Renee Funke was elected second vice president of the New York state organization of the Delta Kappa Gamma International Society for Key Women Educators.

Meghan McCune, associate professor of anthropology and sociology and co-director of the social sciences, presented a paper, Seneca Decolonization and the State of Salamanca: The Changing Relationship Between a Native Nation, a Congressional Village, and New York State, at the 117th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Society.

Political science professor and global studies coordinator Greg Rabb received a fellowship from the State University of New York Rockefeller Institute of Government to study fiscal stress in small western New York cities. He also received a research grant from the University of Illinois to study Palestinian issues.

Ellen Lehning, professor of biology, and Andy Pitoniak, assistant professor of biology, published a paper in the Journal of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society.

Technical writing contributions by cybersecurity and computer technology instructor Ken Zatyko helped a defense contractor win a $200 million contract for educating Department of Defense employees.

Assistant professor and reference librarian Cynthia Horton McKane was a peer reviewer at a Western New York Library Resources Council conference. She also did several presentations on research for JCC and College Connections faculty.

... LATHAM, New York Major General Ray Shields, the Adjutant General for the State of New York, announces the ...

More here:
JCC faculty honored with ApPLE awards | News, Sports, Jobs - Evening Observer

Biologists at Texas A&M University are making strides in understanding biological clock function in several model organisms and translating these studies into broader implications for human health.

The Merlin Laboratory in the Texas A&M Department of Biology has found genetic evidence linking circadian clock genes and clock-regulated molecular pathways to the Monarch butterfly's uncanny ability to sense the changes in day length, or photoperiod -- an environmental cue that signals them to migrate and triggers the reproductive dormancy they exhibit in the process. Their work establishes a clear connection between clock genes and the vitamin A pathway within the brain of this iconic insect.

The Merlin Lab's study, published November 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, not only provides genetic proof for the photoperiod-clock connection but also demonstrates for the first time that it also regulates a critical vitamin A pathway necessary for seasonal responses.

Nearly all organisms adapt to the seasons by adjusting their physiology and behavior to changes in day length, or photoperiod."

Christine Merlin, Texas A&M biologist and 2017 Klingenstein-Simons Fellow

"Despite decades of research, the molecular and genetic mechanisms by which changes in photoperiod are sensed and translated into seasonal changes in animal physiology and behavior have remained poorly understood. While much remains to be learned, our findings pave the way for understanding the mechanisms by which vitamin A operates in the brain to translate day length encoding into seasonal physiological and behavioral responses in animals.

"Given that seasonal changes associated with this pathway have also been reported in the mammalian brain, it is tantalizing to speculate that the function of vitamin A in animal photoperiodism may be evolutionary conserved. If this turns out to be the case, our work in the Monarch could have implications for better understanding seasonal changes in the human brain that could lead to ailments such as seasonal depression."

For the past six years, Merlin's lab within the Texas A&M Center for Biological Clocks Research has been using the majestic Monarch as a model to study animal migration, the role of circadian clocks in regulating daily and seasonal animal physiology and behavior, and the evolution of the animal clockwork. Aided by CRISPR/Cas9 technology, her group already has succeeded in altering key biological clock-related genes in the Monarch in order to study their impact on daily circadian rhythms and seasonal migratory responses.

"Despite significant advances our lab has made in developing genetic tools to knock out virtually any genes in the Monarch genome, which has been key in this study to demonstrate the central importance of the vitamin A pathway in photoperiodic responses, the genetic toolbox in the Monarch is still far from rivaling with the one available in more conventional genetically tractable model organisms, such as Drosophila and the mouse," Merlin said.

One of the complications the Merlin lab had to overcome in the study is that vitamin A is necessary for visual function of the Monarch's compound eyes, meaning that their ninaB1 full-body knockouts would be rendered blind. As a fail-safe, Merlin's team had to find a non-genetic way to eliminate the potential function of the compound eyes as a possible tie-back to the lack of photoperiodic responses observed in these new mutant butterflies.

"We had to be creative, so we turned to arts and crafts experiments," Merlin said. "By painting the compound eyes of wild-type adult butterflies with black paint, we demonstrated that visual function was not necessary for photoperiodic responses, thereby supporting the idea that the vitamin A function in the brain and not the eyes is responsible for photoperiodic sensing and responses."

Merlin says the study raises interesting questions regarding the pathway's possible involvement in any number of intriguing scenarios, including the production of a deep-brain photoreceptor for photoperiodic sensing, the seasonal regulation of a retinoic acid-mediated transcriptional program, and/or the seasonal plasticity of the clock neuronal circuitry in the brain.

"Teasing these possibilities apart through the continued molecular and genetic dissection of this pathway in the Monarch will be necessary to increase our understanding of the mechanisms of action of vitamin A in photoperiodic responsiveness in the Monarch and animals in general," Merlin added.

Merlin credits 2015 Texas A&M biology graduate Samantha Iiams, currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics, for much of her lab's progress in this line of investigations. In addition to serving as first author for the team's PNAS paper, Iiams has received an impressive number of awards for her work forming the basis of this study -- most notably, the International Society for Research on Biological Rhythms' 2018 Patricia DeCoursey Excellence Award as well as several first-place poster prizes.

Source:

Journal reference:

Iiams, S.E., et al. (2019) Photoperiodic and clock regulation of the vitamin A pathway in the brain mediates seasonal responsiveness in the monarch butterfly. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1913915116.

Read the original:
Research shows link between clock genes and vitamin A pathway in the brain of Monarch butterflies - News-Medical.net

More than a hundred people gathered in the Ford Alumni Center Giustina Ballroom Thursday, Nov. 21, to celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of 11 Outstanding Employee Award winners. University of Oregon President Michael H. Schill and Chief Human Resources OfficerMark Schmelz congratulated this years recipients as each received individual acknowledgement and a custom-designed award to mark the achievement.

TheOutstanding Employee Awardsis a campus wide program that recognizes classified employees and officers of administration for excellence on the job. The honorees are nominated by their co-workers for outstanding achievement, such as for going above and beyond, showing exemplary leadership, building community and promoting the universitys mission.

TheOutstanding Employee Awards Selection Committeereviewed hundreds of statements submitted in support of employees across campuses.

The award recipients are profiled on theHR website. The 2019 Outstanding Employee Award winners are:

Classified employees

Kim Enbysk, housing service center specialist, University Housing.

Liz Hahn, custodian, University Housing.

Chris Hallam, custodial services coordinator, Campus Planning and Facilities Management.

Tiffany Stewart, department programs assistant, Department of Physics.

Trudi Stuber, nursing office coordinator, University Health Center.

James Tuttle, studio technician, Sports Product Design.

Officers of administration

Anni Elling, department manager, Department of Human Physiology.

Kevin Hatfield, assistant vice provost for undergraduate research, University Housing.

Lynde Ritzow, associate director, masters industrial internship program, Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact.

Teri Rowe, manager of finance and administration, departments of Economics and Sociology.

Haley Wilson, coordinator of LGBTESS, Office of the Dean of Students.

Read the original post:
Reception honors this year's Outstanding Employee Award winners - AroundtheO

Achieve Consistent Performance Every Day.

You go to work every day, as regular as the ticking of a clock. Yet, some days, you do great youre efficient,productive, and you get results. And on others, you do much less so making mistakes, drifting off in daydream, or your mind freezing with stress and a feeling of being overwhelmed.

Maybe today is one of the latter days, and youre sitting at your desk overwhelmed, quietly panicking, and frustrated with the things that you should but, for whatever reason, cant begetting done. I feel you!

Why does this happen? How come some days we are on our A-game and on others we can be so desperately useless? And the important question is this: HOW can we ensure that we achieve consistent performance every day?

According to the neurologist and CEO of Complete Coherence, Dr Alan Watkins, the secret to consistent performance and success or what he calls being brilliant everyday does not merely lie in our behaviour.

It is not enough, Watkins says in hisTED Talk, simply to say, Ill do more of this or Ill do more of that. Just doing different things doesnt affect your ability to perform better. What you need to do is rather take a look at the deeper parts of you that influence your thinking and, in turn, influence your behaviour.

So, really, of what is our behaviour the result? According to Watkins, there are a number of layers within us that influence our behaviour and of which we not usually conscious.

Our behaviour, we need to realise, is directly related to the first layer our thinking. We cannot begin to perform better if we do not have control of our thinking. When we are performing badly, we are not thinking with clarity, with a calm state of mind. Our judgement is clouded by thinking a million things a minute but what if this happens? what if they get mad at me? how do I solve this problem? why cant I concentrate? but, even worse, we might not be thinking anything at all.

This mental jitteriness or complete shutdown self-evidently affects our performance. Yet, it is difficult, if not impossible, to gain clarity in your thinking just by thinking harder or trying to think differently. Rather, you need to recognise that your patterns of thought are the result of something else: your feelings (layer two), emotions (layer 3), and, fundamentally, your physiology (layer 4).

These three things that affect your thinking are tiered, with the most foundational being physiology.

Lets start with physiology. What do we mean by this? We mean your body, and all the things that are going on inside you. Are you cold? Are you struggling with the flu? Is adrenaline coursing through your veins?These all provide your body with incoming data that is either distracting, pleasant, or both.

Yet, this data is translated intoemotionsby your brain and Watkins is keen to distinguish emotions from feelings. Emotions are the combinations of energy input coming from this varied physical data.These are emotions, arising directly from your physiology.

Whilst the emotions are the raw energy, they becomefeelingswhen you become aware of them and your brain interprets them. The trouble is that we are very rarely aware of them and much of the interpretation is done subconsciously ie. the emotions of excitement and nervousness present in a similar way physically but the brains interpretation dictates the feeling. This is something we can have conscious control over once we are aware of it.

As Watkins says, if asked how you feel, youre probably going to say, ah, yeah, fine, good, thanks, or all right. This is not just a British politeness or reticence to share emotions, as some people might think. Rather, usually people actuallythinkthat they feel fine, even when they probably dont. It just goes to show our general unawareness of what is actually going on inside us.

To change our way of thinking and ultimately our performance we need to become aware of our feelings. And we need to gaincontrol and awarenessof them too.

Watkins uses the example of the heart to show what he means here. The hearts beat is one signal among many from our physiology, and it is one affected by many things that we do from drinking coffee or eating sugar, to taking a break or falling in love.

When youre under pressure, your heart beat goes wild. Not only does it speed up, but it loses its regularity; it becomes totally chaotic. This chaotic signal translates into an anxious emotional state, into afeelingofstress, and it immediately changes your thinking. Usually it stops your thinking dead. Under pressure, like a rabbit in the headlights, your brain stops working. And so, quite simply, your biology affects your thinking.

But how can you get control of that biology? What is one part of your biology you can control quite straightforwardly?

That would be your breathing.

Its okay deep breaths is what my mum used to say to me before a scary day at school. And I can be sure that weve all heard this expression. But it was unclear to me then, and its less clear even now, what deep breaths actually are. Are they long breaths, big gulps of air, or breaths that seem to inflate your belly?

In thinking about getting a grip on consistent performance, Watkins suggests that we should forget about this notion of depth. We should instead focus on the rhythm of our breaths keeping them stable, keeping them regular. Try it, either five seconds in and five seconds out, or four in and six out something like this.

As soon as you do this, your heart will regain its coherence as opposed to its chaos reducing the physiological input, affecting your emotions, your feelings, your thinking and ultimately your behaviour and addressing the issue at the core.

As a leader, Watkins says, it is crucial to understand the underlying influencers on the way you think. This awareness will enable you to be calm and tothinkwell even under the most pressuring circumstances.With an ability to think clearly and calmly, we can change our behaviour and to perform at our best all the time.

See more here:
Think and Breathe: the HOW of Consistent Performance - Thrive Global

SAN MARCOS Carmen Westerberg, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Texas State University, has received one of four 2020 Memory and Cognitve Disorders (MCD) Awards from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience.

Westerberg shares the award with her collaborator, Ken Paller, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. The $300,000 MCD grant will support the teams research study, Does Superior Sleep Physiology Contribute to Superior Memory Function? Implications for Counteracting Forgetting.

The researchers hope to gain insight into the process of forgetting by studying the sleep physiology of people who almost never forget.

These individuals, who have a condition called highly superior autobiographical memory, or HSAM, can effortlessly remember the minute details of every day of their lives with equal clarity, whether it happened last week or 20 years ago.

By comparison, most humans can remember the same amount of detail as those with HSAM for some weeks, but beyond that they recall only highly significant moments in detail.

Sleep physiology is proposed as one possible difference between those with HSAM and those without.

Sleep is known to play an important role in memory consolidation and a detailed human study of the brain activity during sleep of HSAM and control individuals will record, compare and analyze the patterns of slow oscillations (linked to memory consolidation), sleep spindles (also connected to consolidation, and recorded at high levels in HSAM individuals) and the ways in which they co-occur.

A second study will feature an easy-to-use headband that will allow subjects to measure both sleep and memory data at home over a one-month period, to determine if enhanced sleep physiology over multiple nights contributes to superior memory.

By guiding the reactivation of memories that are not autobiographical in nature with sound cues presented during sleep, the study will help reveal whether enhanced sleep physiology in HSAM individuals can enhance memory for non-autobiographical memories as well.

Westerberg and Paller said that learning how highly superior memory works might help uncover patterns in those suffering from degraded memory function caused by afflictions such as Alzheimers disease.

Deeper understanding could give rise to new treatments for those conditions.

The MCD Awards support innovative research by U.S. scientists who are studying neurological and psychiatric diseases, especially those related to memory and cognition.

The awards encourage collaboration between basic and clinical neuroscience to translate laboratory discoveries about the brain and nervous system into diagnoses and therapies to improve human health.

We are thrilled to select some of the best scientists and their work in the country this year, said Ming Guo, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the awards committee and professor in neurology and pharmacology at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. These scientists are addressing questions related to how general anesthesia and sleep impact memory, and how memory works at the basic level. Together, we aim to understand the underlying neurobiology of memory and brain disorders that one day will translate into cures of some of the most devastating brain disorders that afflict millions of people in the world.

The awards are inspired by the interests of William L. McKnight, who founded the McKnight Foundation in 1953 and wanted to support research on diseases affecting memory.

His daughter, Virginia McKnight Binger, and the McKnight Foundation board established the McKnight neuroscience program in his honor in 1977.

For more information, visit http://www.mcknight.org.

Read this article:
Memory And Cognitive Disorders Award To Help Texas State Researchers Explore Link Between Sleep, Memory - San Marcos Corridor News

ByGreg Rienzi

STOCKHOLMA small group of men clutching notebooks and folders gathered Thursday afternoon outside Stockholm's Grand Hotel, a 145-year-old luxe waterfront accommodation in the historic city's Old Town. They were autograph hunters, and many had been there for hours in the December cold waiting for the signatures of the hotel's guests of honor. Since 1901, the Grand Hotel has hosted Nobel laureates and their families, and Thursday was arrival day in Sweden's capital for most of this year's 14 award winners.

As the skies darkened and the biting Baltic Sea winds whipped across the Vartan Strait, the crowd of autograph hounds only grew. One such gentleman, a 70-year-old freelance photographer named Hans, has stood outside the hotel on arrival day every year since 1976, when he collected the signature of Saul Bellow, that year's winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. In a well-worn red notebook, he held signatures of dozensperhaps hundredsof laureates including author Alice Munro and British biochemist Gregory Winter. The next one he sought would go on a photo he kept in a folder. "I hope he will sign," Hans said, pointing to the name he'd written in black marker, Gregg L. Semenza.

Minutes later, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor and winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine gladly obliged, signing a dozen autographs or more just moments after he was whisked out of a Volvo XC40 SUV, the official car of Nobel Week, and onto the red carpet accompanied by his wife, Laura Margaret Kasch-Semenza. Other bystanders whipped out their phones and cameras to capture the moment. Semenza had been in Stockholm less than an hour, and he was already getting the rock star treatment.

Video credit: Len Turner and Dave Schmelick

In this city, the home and birthplace of the Nobel Prize, laureates are treated as celebrities, and the associated ceremonies are as much a part of popular culture in Sweden as the Academy Awards are in the U.S. After laureates arrive in Stockholm, they face a gauntlet of a schedule that includes press conferences, champagne receptions, lectures, a concert, school visits, and a trip to the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), all leading up to the grand white-tie affair award ceremony held on Dec. 10 at the Stockholm Concert Hall. Laureates will also participate in Nobel Minds, a roundtable TV discussion that is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Annika Pontikis, director of communications for the Nobel Foundation, said the week is a whirlwind for each award recipient, most of whom are certainly not used to this level of attention and pageantry.

"There is a lot of expectation in the air when they arrive in Stockholm," Pontikis said. "We do our best to prepare them before and after they arrive for what is about to happen. The people of Sweden have been looking forward to this."

Image credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University

To keep them on schedule and handle all the small details, each laureate is assigned a personal attach, a young diplomat from the Swedish foreign ministry who meets them the moment they step off the plane and stays with them for the entirety of their stay.

So began the Nobel Week journey for Semenza, 63, who earned the prize for the groundbreaking discovery of the gene that controls how cells respond to low oxygen levels. Semenza shares the award, and the $913,000 cash prize, with William G. Kaelin Jr. and Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe.

Considered among the most prestigious awards in the world, Nobel Prizes have been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace since 1901 by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm. A total of 916 individuals and 24 organizations have received the prize named in memory of Sweden's own Alfred Nobel, a businessman, chemist, engineer, and inventor known for the discovery of dynamite.

The week officially kicked off Thursday with a morning press event held at the Nobel Prize Museum in the Old Town. On hand were representatives of the Nobel Foundation and some of the week's key participants, including Sebastian Gibrand, chef for the Nobel Banquet who won the silver medal earlier this year at the Bocuse d'Or, the world's most prestigious international culinary competition. For this year's banquet menu, Gibrand and a team of 40 chefs will focus on locally sourced ingredients from Swedish producers to feed the 1,300-plus guests, including the Swedish Royal Family.

"We will use everything from root to top, and nose to tail, to make sure we use all of the product and nothing goes to waste," said Gibrand, adding what a great honor it was to be hosting the prestigious dinner he views as a symbol of peace.

On Friday morning, the Nobel laureates visited the Nobel Prize Museum, where they each autographed a chair in the museum's restaurant and donated a specially selected artifact to the museum's collection. Semenza donated a 27-year-old autoradiogram, an image on an X-ray film produced by the pattern of decay emissions from a distribution of radioactive phosphorus. This particular image, he said, was a critical step in the discovery of hypoxia-inducible factor 1, or HIF-1, which has far-reaching implications in understanding the impact of decreased oxygen levels in blood disorders, cancer, diabetes, coronary artery disease, and other conditions.

Complete coverage

As Johns Hopkins physician-scientist Gregg Semenza travels to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize, the Hub takes readers along for the journey, from his arrival in Sweden to his Nobel lecture at the Karolinska Institutet to the grand Nobel Award Ceremony and Banquet

Erika Lanner, CEO and director of the Nobel Prize Museum, said the artifacts give the museum's visitors an opportunity to learn more about the discoveries and works that the laureates are rewarded for.

"We are mainly a museum of stories and ideas," Lanner said. "These objects that we humbly ask the Nobel laureates to donate to us bring life, meaning, and body to these stories, which we hope will serve as inspiration for a young audience. They also help us understand and get closer to the person, which is important in itself."

The Nobel Prize is so unique and special, Lanner said, because it underscores the impact one individual can have.

"The Nobel Prize is about the possibilities for ideas to change the world," she said.

Image caption: A crowd gathers outside the Nobel Museum to catch a glimpse of the laureates as they attend a private welcoming ceremony Friday

Image credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University

Weeks before he left for Stockholm, Semenza said that he was looking forward to the gamut of events leading up to the award celebration. In many ways, life had already changed for the modest researcher, who has gotten used to posing for pictures and selfies everywhere he goes.

"In a way, it will be more hectic than it's already been for me, but I feel we've had so much preparation for that week and a half. It will be good just to be on autopilot and have an attach to tell me what to do every step of the way. And I'm very good at taking orders," Semenza said with a laugh.

He said he was most excited about taking in the once-in-a-lifetime experience with family, friends, and mentors who helped make his discovery possible, and who he hoped would enjoy the memorable experience as much as he would. Johns Hopkins will be well represented among Semenza's guests in Stockholm, who include JHU President Ronald J. Daniels; Paul B. Rothman, dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine; Charles Wiener, professor of medicine and president of Johns Hopkins Medicine International; Haig Kazazian, professor of genetic medicine; Landon King, professor of medicine and executive vice dean for the School of Medicine; Ted Dawson, professor of neurology and director of the Institute for Cell Engineering; and David Valle, professor of genetic medicine and director of the Institute of Genetic Medicine.

Image caption: Semenza is fitted for a white tie tuxedo with tails

Image credit: Will Kirk / Johns Hopkins University

Shortly after his Thursday arrival, Semenza was driven to Hans Allde tailor shop in the city's business district to be fitted for the tuxedo that he will wear on the day of the award ceremony and banquet. He was fitted personally by owner Lars Allde, the son of the store's founder, who has worked with the majority of Nobel laureates since 1982.

Semenza looked relaxed and beaming as he entered the store, greeted as a VIP and introduced to the official photographer of 2019 Nobel Prize winners, who told him: "Get used to me. I will be with you every step of the way."

The visit was a brief onehis only big decision was what type of bow tie he would wear. Semenza left the store eager to return to his hotel, get some sleep, and prepare for what lies ahead.

"Tomorrow we get going for sure," he said. "I'm really looking forward to it."

Follow this link:
For Nobel laureates, a whirlwind welcome in Stockholm - The Hub at Johns Hopkins

From the study of meteorite fragments that have fallen to Earth, scientists have confirmed that bacteria can not only survive the harsh conditions of space but can transport biological material between planets. Because of how common meteorite impacts were when life emerged on Earth (ca. 4 billion years ago), scientists have been pondering whether they may have delivered the necessary ingredients for life to thrive.

In a recent study, an international team led by astrobiologist Tetyana Milojevic from the University of Vienna examined a specific type of ancient bacteria that are known to thrive on extraterrestrial meteorites. By examining a meteorite that contained traces of this bacteria, the team determined that these bacteria prefer to feed on meteors a find which could provide insight into how life emerged on Earth.

The study, which recently appeared in Scientific Reports (a publication maintained by the journal Nature), was led by astrobiologist Tetyana Milojevic of the University of Vienna. For years, she and other members of the Extremophiles/Space Biochemistry Group have been investigating the meteorite-associated growth physiology of the single-celled metallophilic bacteria known as Metallosphaera sedula.

To break it down, Metallosphaera sedula are part of a family known as lithotrophs, bacteria that derive their energy from inorganic sources. Research into their physiological processes could provide insight into how extraterrestrial materials could have been deposited on Earth billions of years ago, which could have provided a steady supply of nutrients and energy for emerging microorganisms.

For the sake of their study, the team examined strains of this bacteria that were found on a meteorite retrieved on Earth. The meteorite in question, Northwest Africa 1172 (NWA 1172), is a multimetallic object that was discovered near the town of Erfoud, Morocco, in 2000. What they found was that this bacteria rapidly colonized the meteors material, far faster than it would minerals found on Earth. As Milojevic explained:

Meteorite-fitness seems to be more beneficial for this ancient microorganism than a diet on terrestrial mineral sources. NWA 1172 is a multimetallic material, which may provide much more trace metals to facilitate metabolic activity and microbial growth. Moreover, the porosity of NWA 1172 might also reflect the superior growth rate of M. sedula.

Milojevic and her colleagues determined this by examining how the microbes trafficked iron oxide molecules into their cells and monitored how their oxidation state changed over time. This was done by combining multiple analytical spectroscopy techniques with transmission electron microscopy, which provided nanometer-scale resolution and revealed telltale biogeochemical fingerprints on the meteor.

These fingerprints revealed that M. sedula thrived on the meteors metallic constituents. As Milojevic concluded:

Our investigations validate the ability of M. sedula to perform the biotransformation of meteorite minerals, unravel microbial fingerprints left on meteorite material, and provide the next step towards an understanding of meteorite biogeochemistry.

The study of lithotrophs that thrive on extraterrestrial objects could help astronomers answer key questions about how and where life emerged in our Solar System. It could also reveal whether or not these objects, and the bacteria that they deposited on Earth over time, played an important role in the evolution of life.

For some time, scientists have theorized that life (or the basic ingredients thereof) are distributed throughout the Universe by meteors, comets, and asteroids. Who knows? Perhaps life on Earth (and possibly throughout the cosmos) owes its existence to extreme bacteria that turn inorganic elements into food for organics.

Further Reading: University of Vienna, Nature

Like Loading...

Continued here:
A Microorganism With a Taste for Meteorites Could Help us Understand the Formation of Life on Earth - Universe Today