Q. My wife's insecurities make her brag when she is around her family. She is a kindhearted and giving person but when her sisters and she get together which is often they get into this tiresome game of one-upmanship. My wife turns into a different person. She shows off and boasts and even tries to drag me into it bragging about things about me that I would rather keep private. I have tried to talk to her about this but she just doesn't see it. I don't know how to handle this anymore.

A. Does she not see she's doing it? Not see how it bothers you? Or maybe not care either way?

At some point, her braggadocio with her sisters, though irritating, veers outside the realm of what you reasonably should have say over (yeah, I can see the "It's none of his business" comments now!). But when it directly involves you, like sharing your information in a way you're not comfortable with, you have a right to be heard.

Focus on that as a concrete example. Don't psychoanalyze her and make it about her "insecurities," but rather explain that you simply don't like feeling like artillery in a war of one-upmanship. "It felt weird for me to be brought into the conversation in that way; I'd really rather be kept out of the fray."

My guess is this dynamic runs decades deep, so it may be tough for you to make headway in helping her change it, especially if she's not on board. You might get more satisfaction finding ways to get your own distance from these brouhahas, logistically and mentally.

Q. I have suffered from panic attacks since I was a child. In college I was put on medication for anxiety, and I am now 27. The medication has helped a bit over the years, but I am hoping to go off of it soon (for many reasons). Is it a bad idea to do this on my own? I know I should probably see a therapist, but I also feel like I could wait and see (money and insurance are an issue) and seek it out if things get bad.

A. No two people with panic attacks are alike just like no two people with vintage brooch obsessions and so I don't want to pretend to know exactly what combination of physiology, environmental conditioning and overall emotional factors make up your particular case. But whoever prescribes the medication should also supervise your coming off it, since there may be things to keep an eye on, depending on the med.

Also, if you've never had cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) or acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) before for your panic attacks or anxiety, you may very well find them helpful. And they could particularly be useful during the transition off the medication. A skilled CBT or ACT therapist who specializes in anxiety and panic treatment can help teach you tools to better manage the panic in the moment in physiological, cognitive and emotional ways.

Some therapists have sliding scales, and some training programs have low-cost therapy. Look around and see what may be possible for you.

Bonior is a licensed clinical psychologist.

Read more:
How can I get my wife to stop her tiresome bragging? - The Oakland Press

What is the biological basis of thought? How do brains store memories? Questions like these have intrigued humanity for millennia, but the answers still remain largely elusive.

You might think that the humble fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has little to add here, but since the 1970s, scientists have actually been studying the neural basis of higher brain functions, like memory, in these insects. Classic workperformed by several labs, including those of Martin Heisenberg and Seymour Benzerfocused on studying the behavior of wild-type and genetically mutated Drosophila in simple learning and memory tasks, ultimately leading to the discovery of several key molecules and other underlying mechanisms. However, because one could not peer into the brain of behaving flies to eavesdrop on neurons in action, this field, in its original form, could only go so far in helping to explain the mechanisms of cognition.

In 2010, when I was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Michael Dickinson, we developed the first method for measuring electrical activity of neurons in behaving Drosophila. A similar method was developed in parallel by Johannes Seelig and Vivek Jayaraman. In these approaches, one glues a fly to a custom plate that allows one to carefully remove the cuticle over the brain and measure neural activity via electrodes or fluorescence microscopy. Even though the fly is glued in place, the animal can still flap her wings in tethered flight or walk on an air-cushioned ball, which acts like a spherical treadmill beneath her legs.

These technical achievements attracted the attention of the Drosophila neurobiology community, but should anyone really care about seeing a fly brain in action beyond this small, venerable, group of arthropod-loving nerds (of which I'm honored to be a member)? In other words, will these methods help to reveal anything of general relevance beyond flies? Increasingly, the answer looks to be yes.

There exist a few dozen cells that project neural fibers into a doughnut-shaped structure in the middle of the fly brain, with each cell branching to fill one of 16 pizza-slice-like wedges that make up the donut. Seelig and Jayaraman first imaged the activity of these neurons in walking flies using fluorescence microscopy via the new methods just described. Remarkably, they observed that this population of cells expresses a single "bump" of neural activity that stably persists at one position around the doughnut while a fly stands still and this activity bump rotates around the doughnut, like a compass needle, when the fly turns left or right.

The bump updates its position around the doughnut most accurately if the fly is given a visual cue that indicates her angular heading as she turns on the floating ball. However, even in complete darkness the bump is still present in the brain, and its position around the doughnut tracks the flys orientation (though not as precisely as with a visual cue). These results convincingly argued that flies have an internal sense of orientation, similar to our own sense of orientation in an environment that persists even after we close our eyes.

A graduate student in my lab, Jonathan Green, pushed things one step further. He described a neural circuit mechanism that explains how the activity bump rotates around the doughnut, even in complete darkness, guided by the fly's internal sense of how fast and in which direction she senses herself to be turning. (A similar circuit was concurrently described by Dan Turner-Evans and Stephanie Wegener in Vivek Jayaraman's lab.) Moreover, in our newest work, Jonathan Green, alongside a postdoctoral researcher, Vikram Vijayan, and another graduate student, Peter Mussells Pires, described how flies use the bump of activity to guide navigational behavior.

Specifically, we showed that the fly uses the position of the bump in the doughnut as a compass-like estimate of current heading that is compared with a goal heading (the angle along which the fly wishes to be heading), to determine which way to turn andquantitativelyhow hard to turn and how fast to walk forward. This same basic mechanism is very likely at play in the brains of bees, ants and other more-expert insect navigators, as they make their foraging trips away from and back to the nest.

In the 1980s, James Ranck and Jeff Taube discovered the so-called head-direction cells: neurons in mammals whose physiological properties bear a striking resemblance to the compass neurons just described in flies. Humans almost certainly have head-direction cells as well. In humans or other mammals, however, a neural circuit to explain how head-direction-cell activity updates as one turns remains elusive to this day, as does the precise functional role that these neurons serve in navigation. Thus, apart from insects, our work in Drosophila is laying a foundation that could serve as a road map for analyzing how bigger brains, perhaps even our own, might construct a sense of orientation and use that internal sense to guide navigational actions.

Beyond angular orientation, our understanding of how we remember locations in 2-D or 3-D space or how we perform nonspatial cognitive operationslike keeping track of elapsed time or predicting the likelihood of events happening in the futureremains similarly fuzzy. This is not to say that there has been no progress. Neurons whose physiological activity correlates with many such processes have been found in the mammalian brain, and scientists are even able to artificially activate and inactivate those neurons in behaving animals. However, we still do not have a comprehensive understanding of how brains produce an internal sense of space, time or value, nor how such internal senses guide behavior.

Luckily, Drosophila appear to implement versions of the abovementioned cognitive processes (and likely many others). Because Drosophila offers a small brain alongside some of the most advanced genetic, anatomical and physiological methods in neuroscience, I and others in my field believe that the first detailed neural mechanisms for explaining how such mental processes are implemented will become clear in this insect over the coming years. Our recent success in the angular heading domain could represent the tip of the iceberg with regard to how the fly could make plain the mechanisms underlying many other cognitive operations.

Overall, flies have not been bit players in the history of biology. It is by studying Drosophila that we first learned that genes physically reside on chromosomes, that a transcriptional feedback loop generates the circadian rhythms that pervade almost all life on earth, and that hox genes act as master regulators of body morphogenesis. Given the foundational role served by Drosophila in genetics, circadian rhythms, development and many other fields of science, it should perhaps be of little surprise to see Drosophila now serving a similarly pioneering role in cognitive neuroscience. Research projects that might take years or decades to complete in a rat or a monkey, might take only months to conclude in Drosophila.

This difference means that one can take bigger risks when studying flies and pursue seemingly intractable questions more readily, without betting one's entire career on a specific answer turning out to be correct. As the fly community amasses initial answers on how Drosophila implement their cognitive computationseven if they are in a reduced form compared to ourswe hope to inspire directed tests for similar mechanisms in mammalian brains, where the initial exploratory work is harder to perform.

One particularly intriguing aspect of studying neurobiology in Drosophila is the possibility of unifying our understanding of cognition at the gene, cell and circuit levels. Most disorders of the mind, like Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, arise from molecular abnormalities in genes that are largely conserved across humans and flies. Intense efforts have been placed on understanding the pathophysiology of the relevant molecular pathways, but without an ability to robustly link the molecular biology of these pathways to their normal and abnormal role in cognition and behavior.

The premier molecular-genetic methods available in flies, alongside the mature neurophysiological and behavioral approaches, promise to provide deeper insights into how genes, through their effects on cellular and circuit physiology, influence higher brain function and behavior. Thus, flies have the potential to illuminate our basic understanding of cognition alongside paving the way for more rational drug design for mental illness, down the road.

New understandings in cognitive neuroscience are now emerging in Drosophila. Only time will tell the full extent of what we'll learn when all is said and done, but it seems possible that this tiny insect might help to unravel some of the biggest mysteries of the brain. Stay tuned.

See the original post:
Could Fruit Flies Reveal the Hidden Mechanisms of the Mind? - Scientific American

Application closing date 01/01/2020Location Preston CampusSalary Grade/Salary: I (]44045- 51034)Job category/type Academic, ResearchAttachments

Job description

The University of Central Lancashire and American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine have put together a new programme aimed at helping ease the global shortage of doctors. The two institutions linked up in 2017 when almost the entire contingent of the AUC School of Medicine re-located to UCLan while their base on the island of St Maarten was rebuiltfollowing a hurricane.

Now, UCLan and the AUC have joined forces to offer a new blended programme, to enable students from the UK and across the world to study towards their accredited medical qualification, the Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree - the postgraduate degree of physicians in the United States. UCLan's School of Medicine will run the 2-year programme, which commenced in September 2019, providing students with a postgraduate diploma in International Medical Sciences (PGIMS) from UCLan, followed by their MD with AUC. Students will then be eligible to do clinical rotations at AUCs clinical sites, which include hospitals in the US, the UK, and Canada.

As part of this exciting development, the University is seeking to appoint a Senior Lecturer in Physiology. Working within a committed and enthusiastic team you will contribute to the course planning, teaching, and assessment as well as providing course/module leadership.

The successful applicant will be educated to PhD level in a relevant area of study as well as having a good honours degree (or equivalent) in Physiology. You will have REF-able publications in the area of physiology or biological sciences/ medicine or medical education. Experience of higher education teaching, enthusiasm for your subject and the ability to teach up to masters level. A teaching qualification such as fellowship of the HEA is desirable.

You will of course also have excellent communication, presentation and team working skills. Informal enquiries are welcomed - please contact Charlotte Rhodes, Programme Lead (crhodes5@uclan.ac.uk) via email in the first instance.

If you require a Tier 2 visa to work in the UK, please ensure that you will meet all of the criteria before applying for this vacancy. For further information, please visit the government website -https://www.gov.uk/tier-2-general/eligibility

Applicnts need to meet all essential criteria on the person specification to be considered for interview. This position is based in Preston.

Please apply online viawww.uclan.ac.uk/jobs; if you cannot apply online please contact Human Resources on 01772 892324 and quoting the reference number. CVs will not be considered unless accompanied by a completed application form.

School/Service: School of Medicine - AUC

Grade/Salary: I (44045- 51034)

Hours: Full Time (37.00 hours per week - 1.0 FTE)

Basis: Indefinite

Closing Date: 1st January 2020

Interview Date: To be confirmed

See original here:
Senior Lecturer in Physiology job with UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE | 187976 - Times Higher Education (THE)

By Michael Le Page

Kew

Seeds from 400 wild relatives of food crops such as bananas, rice and aubergines have been collected to save their valuable genetic diversity before it is lost. These could be crucial for maintaining food production as the climate changes.

This was a massive effort, says Hannes Dempewolf at the Crop Trust in Bonn, Germany, which led the 10-year project. The next step is to use the wild plants to breed new varieties of crops with traits such as drought or disease resistance.

That is important because we know that if farmers keep cultivating the same varieties in the same way, yields can plummet as pests and diseases evolve and spread. For instance, rice yields in Asia were hit by the rice grassy stunt virus in the 1970s, says Dempewolf. Resistant varieties were then created by crossing rice with a wild relative. Now the virus is becoming a problem again. It is a constant battle, a bit like walking up an escalator the wrong way.

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What is more, the speed at which such issues arise is accelerating because of climate change, which is already hitting food production. You have to walk faster to stand still, says Alisdair Fernie of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Germany, who wasnt involved in the project.

This is why the Crop Trust set out to save the genetic diversity present in wild plants. Since 2013, more than 12 million seeds have been collected, says Chris Cockel at Kews Millennium Seed Bank in the UK. These come from about 5000 locations of the 400 crop relatives.

Plants sampled include a wild relative of the carrot, one that grows in salty water, an oat relative resistant to the powdery mildew that devastates normal oats, and a kind of bean that tolerates high temperatures and drought.

The seeds are now being sent to non-profit breeding organisations around the world. Some will also be stored in seed banks, including the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic.

In some cases, the collectors arrived in the nick of time. In Ethiopia, samples were taken from a region that will soon be flooded by a dam. In Chile, they found only one site where a wild barley was still growing after a massive fire destroyed most of its habitat.

Sometimes they were too late. In Costa Rica, collectors found only sugar cane plantations and urban sprawl where a wild rice used to grow.

Read more: Domesticating tomatoes took millennia we can now redo it in 3 years

We have made incredible progress, Marie Haga, director of the Crop Trust, said in a statement. But there is more to be done, and as threats to the worlds biodiversity mount, this work is more urgent than ever.

As well as improving existing crops, we should also be conserving and domesticating wild plants that are rarely grown and eaten, says Fernie. At present the world is over-reliant on a handful of crops, some of which are grown where conditions arent ideal.

In these places, domesticating local plants which can now be done very rapidly could allow more food to be grown in a more sustainable way. But for farmers to diversify the plants they grow, consumers will have to diversify their diets.

More on these topics:

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The race to find wild relatives of food plants before its too late - New Scientist News

Scientists believe women whose mothers have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), one of the leading causes of infertility, are five times more likely to develop the condition.

Researchers studied women in Sweden and Chile, as well as mice, to arrive at their conclusion on the condition which on average affects 17 percent of women of reproductive age. The condition is characterized by enlarged ovaries which may have fluid-filled sacs surrounding the eggsirregular periods and high levels of the hormone androgen. As well as issues with menstruatingwhich can cause problems getting pregnantthose with PCOS are also more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol, have excess hair on the body and face, thin hair on the head, develop acne and gain weight.

From birth to adulthood, the team followed 21 women in Chile who had mothers with PCOS, and compared them with 14 who didn't. They also studied 29,736 women from a Swedish patient database, 2,275 of who had mothers with PCOS.

In both the Swedish and Chilean cohorts, the daughters of women with the condition were five times more likely to have PCOS than those who didn't.

To find out more about the potential mechanism behind this link, the team also studied mice with PCOS-like traits. They found mice exposed to androgen hormones in the womb were more likely to give birth to babies with the condition. This was passed on for up to three generations.

The researchers also used DNA samples from the participants of the Chilean study, and found four of the genes expressed across all generations in mice cells followed the same expression pattern in humans.

Obesity wasn't found to be linked to PCOS in the study. It's unclear what causes PCOS, but the two conditions are thought to be linked.

Co-author Elisabet Stener-Victorin, professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, explained to Newsweek the team has studied the potential causes of PCOS for many years.

In a separate study, they showed that women with the condition have higher levels of androgens, irregular menstrual cycles, and abnormally shaped ovaries. PCOS patients also had a higher chance of being insulin resistant, and having enlarged fat cells independent of obesity, as well as differences in their fat and muscles related to gene expression.

Stener-Victorin said the team's past work in rodents suggested encountering excess androgen in the womb may change gene expression, and increase the risk of first-generation offspring developing PCOS.

That inspired their latest investigation aimed at seeing if PCOS-like symptoms could be passed down to the third generation of mice.

"This study indicates that it is rather intrauterine/germ cell factors than genetic factors that contribute to the development and transmission of the disease," Stener-Victorin explained.

Commenting on the potential uses of the research, Stener-Victorin said the genes identified could serve as potential biomarkers to predict the development of PCOS and have the potential to be used for screening, "although it requires further validation."

Stener-Victorin said a genetic test for PCOS wouldn't be possible off the back of the current research as several candidate genes were identified.

"It might be in the future, but more research is needed here," said Stener-Victorin, who co-authored the paper with Qiaolin Deng, associate professor in the department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institutet.

The work could also help the development of a treatment to prevent PCOS being passed on, she added.

Stener-Victorin highlighted the fact that PCOS affects up to 17 percent of women, but it is under-diagnosed. On average, women must visit three doctors before they are told they have PCOS, she said.

"It is of importance to increase the awareness of PCOS and its co-morbidities in the general community. It is not OK that it takes two years and several doctors before you are even diagnosed," said Stener-Victorin.

Read the original post:
Daughters of Women With PCOS Five Times More Likely to Develop Condition, Scientists Say - Newsweek

STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine) fields are predominantly male-oriented. But, interestingly, women were the first computer engineers, software designers, mathematicians at NASA, and many other pioneering fields. Today, even though more women are graduating with technical and science degrees, from the workplace to science labs, women remain a minority. To encourage more women to take on roles and leadership positions in science and tech, various initiatives like Girls Who Code are being implemented.

Some of the first pioneers in tech are women like Grace Hopper and even today, these women in STEMM continue to inspire more women to take the path less travelled.

"If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say." - Barbara McClintock, cytogeneticist and winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

"Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment." - Rosalind Franklin, chemist, molecular biologist, and one of the key figures behind unlocking the structure of human DNA.

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy." - Marie Curie, first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the only person to ever win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences.

All sorts of things can happen when youre open to new ideas and playing around with things. Stephanie Kwolek, chemist who invented Kevlar and winner of the Lavoisier Medal for technical achievements.

"Courage is like its a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. Its like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging." - Marie Daly, the first African-American woman to earn a PhD in chemistry. She discovered the relationship between cholesterol and clogged arteries.

I increasingly believe, and remind myself, that my ideas are valuable. People will listen to and appreciate them more based on my confidence conceptualizing and sharing them. Only one idea can be chosen, but everyone has to feel confident to share theirs because it contributes to the final outcome. - Tracy Sun, former research scientist and Founder of Poshmark.

I didnt want to just know the names of things. I remember really wanting to know how it all worked. - Elizabeth Blackburn, Winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

I tell young people: Do not think of yourself, think of others. Think of the future that awaits you, think about what you can do and do not fear anything. - Rita Levi Montalcini, Italian neurologist and 1986 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology.

(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)

Link:
Quotes by women in STEMM to inspire you to follow your dreams - YourStory

During childhood, many of us are taught about the importance of kindness.

But are you aware of the different motivations behind kindness and the benefits it can have on yourself?

It's not uncommon to experience a "feel-good rush" after you've been kind to another person, says Dr James Kirby, a lecturer in clinical psychology at The University of Queensland.

"Sometimes people refer to it as the warm glow, and that's some of the endorphins that are being kicked back into the system, the internal reward system," he says.

So, is getting a regular rush of these endorphins as simple as just being more kind, more often?

A study conducted by psychologists at the University of Sussex in 2018 examined brain scans of more than a thousand participants who were carrying out acts of kindness.

It discovered that people benefit from acts of kindness regardless of whether they are strategically motivated (meaning there is something to be gained from their act of kindness), or altruistic (there is nothing in it for them) but the "warm glow" effect was at its peak with altruistic acts of kindness.

"We found that there's a part of the brain that is even more active when we give away [acts of kindness] with no possible benefits for ourselves, so in the altruistic case," says Jo Cutler, a PhD student who co-authored the study.

"So, this is when that warm glow from kindness will be its strongest, and we saw the brain activity reflecting that."

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Eager to get a better understanding of kindness, Cyril Grueter, senior lecturer at University of Western Australia, carried out a 'lost letter experiment' in Perth.

It involved dropping letters across different neighbourhoods, including low and high socio-economic suburbs, on two separate occasions.

Australians disagree on many issues, but we're united in one thing that we should treat each other with more respect.

In the first study, published in 2016, his team dropped 300 letters. In the second study conducted more than a year later, 1,200 letters were dispersed in various areas.

To his surprise, on both occasions, 50 per cent of the letters that were dropped were returned.

"If you encounter a letter on the pavement and you pick it up and you post it, then that obviously means you have to go out of your way, you incur a cost and that's exactly how we define altruism, incurring a cost to help someone else," he says.

"So that really tells us that humans have this innate kindness, otherwise they wouldn't do that.

"And to our surprise, again, we found that letters dropped in high socio-economic areas were more likely to be returned.

"We believe that it may have something to do with the fact that people in low socio-economic areas, they are more preoccupied with meeting their immediate needs. And whereas people in high-end suburbs, they may have slightly different priorities. But we can only speculate on why people in low-end suburbs were less likely to return a letter."

Has an act of kindness changed the course of your day, life or community?

Tell us about it and the person behind it (dont forget to add where youre based): kindnesshero@abc.net.au.

Your details will be kept private and if we select your story as one to feature, we'll be in touch.

Being kind to other people can have multiple benefits, but it's also just as important to be kind to yourself, stresses Dr Kirby.

"If I am being kind towards myself, the same regions light up if I'm receiving kindness from another person or giving kindness to another person," Dr Kirby says.

"That's why we tell people, when you have a setback or difficulty, what's the tone of your self-talk like? Do you talk to yourself in an aggressive, matter-of-fact, blunt way, or can you speak to yourself in a friendlier way?

"If you speak to yourself in a friendly way, much like a friend would in terms of trying to be kind and helpful, the same areas of the brain light up."

We asked 54,000 people about their lives. See what they told us and how you compare.

As a clinical psychologist, Dr Kirby adds that he works with a lot of people who feel they are unlovable and undeserving of kindness or compassion.

"They are very good at being kind to others but the very idea or thought of being kind to themselves is just completely foreign or a big no-no. They find it very threatening," he says.

"We all have this inner voice that is judgemental or commenting or narrating monitoring how we are going and performing.

"You try to explore what's that about or where has this come from. Sometimes it can be, 'Oh, that's the way Dad spoke to me', or 'That's the way teachers spoke to me' so it has a long history.

"So, when you're seeing people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, that kind of voice has been there for years a lot of people don't recognise that that inner tone can impact your physiology in your body much like if it was coming from someone else."

Kindness is everywhere as these readers shared with us when we asked to hear about the little gestures and favours that have helped brighten their day.

If you're wanting to start your day in the right mindset by being kinder to yourself, Dr Kirby has some words of advice:

"When you wake up in the morning, just welcome yourself."

Sounds odd, right?

"Yes, that sounds a bit funny," he laughs.

"But welcome yourself as if you're saying hello to a dear friend in your mind. I would say, 'Oh, good morning James'. Wake yourself with that joyful friendliness and playfulness, and that kicks off a different physiology in your body.

"As opposed to 'What, it's 6am, this is shit I have so much stuff to do'. That kicks off a stress physiology in your body, and already your stress levels are at their peak in the morning, and then they drop away across the day."

Then for 30 seconds or a minute, contemplate: "If I was to be at my kindest today, what would I do?"

"Just imagine what it would be like to walk around at your kindest. Then start your day."

A belief that Australians need to show more respect to each other was the top uniting issue to emerge from theAustralia Talks National Survey,which asked 54,000 Australians about their lives and what keeps them up at night.Use our interactive tool to see the results and how their answers compare with yoursavailable in English, simplified Chinese, Arabic and Vietnamese.

Then, join Annabel Crabb as she takes you through some of the most surprising and exciting insights with Waleed Aly onthe Australia Talks TV special on iview.

Original post:
The chemistry and psychology of kindness - ABC News

White-nose syndrome kills bats during hibernation. Because the bats under the Ann Richards Bridge migrate, they may be spared from getting the disease.

White-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that has decimated bat populations, is spreading in Texas. Scientists are trying everything from vaccines to UV lights to control the disease. Now, theyre asking the public for help.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has started accepting ideas to fight white-nose syndrome.If your idea is picked as one of the most promising, you could win up to $20,000 and work with scientists to test it out.

The website for the contestsays it is open to any idea to permanently eradicate, weaken, or disarm the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome.

Were trying to sort of not restrict the thinking on any of this, says Jonathan Reichard, assistant coordinator for the services national white-nose syndrome response. We really want very open minds on what ideas can come in.

Earlier this year, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department announced the fungus causing the disease had been found in 11 newcounties in the state, including the Bracken Bat Cave in San Antonio, the worlds largestbat colony.

That cave, like under the Ann Richards Bridge in Austin, is home to millions of Mexican free-tailed bats.

The good news is that Mexican free-tailed bats migrate during the winter rather than hibernate. And white-nose syndrome kills bats during hibernation, Jonah Evans, a mammalogist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, told KUT at the time.

While the bats are away, Texas Parks and Wildlife isdisinfecting manmade bat roostslike bridges in East Texas to see if it might slow or stop the spread of the fungus.

Reichard said researchers are also trying to figure out how some bats have managed to survive the plague of white-nose syndrome in the Northeast, where its impact has been nearly apocalyptic.

Theres ongoing work to figure out what it is thats helping those bats survive, he says. It could be anything from their physiology to the environment they chose to live in the winter time.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will accept ideas for its white-nose syndrome contest until the end of the year.

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Got An Idea To Save Bats From White-Nose Syndrome? The Government Wants To Hear It! - Houston Public Media

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) A 17-year-olds memory was honored at his high school in Fort Worth on Monday night.

Benjamin Castaneda died Thanksgiving morning after a crash involving a suspected drunk driver.

Benjamin Castaneda vigil (CBS 11)

Monday night, friends, family, classmates and teachers gathered at North Side High School to remember the teenager.

His voice was so big, just like his heart, said Carla Martin. She had Benjamin as a student in her Honors Anatomy and Physiology class. Benjamin was known as a talented vocalist and violinist.

He played with his schools mariachi band.

I first saw him perform and hes the scrawny little kid, and I said where did that sound come from? Martin recalled.

Benjamin was killed Thanksgiving morning by a suspected drunk driver going the wrong direction on Loop 820 in North Richland Hills.

The woman police say is responsible for the deadly crash, 29-year-old Neomi Martinez, was charged with intoxication manslaughter. She bonded out of the Tarrant County Jail on Saturday with a $75,000 bond.

He had a bright future ahead of him, said Jessica Arreola Cardenas, his freshman English teacher.

According to Fort Worth ISD, several other events are also planned at the high school this week to support the family.

This is the kind of community we have, where if theres something we need, they come out, said North Sides principal Antonio Martinez. He said the school has extra counselors on hand as well to help any students who need to talk.

Continued here:
Fort Worth Teen Benjamin Castaneda, Killed By Alleged Drunk Driver On Thanksgiving, Remembered At Vigil - CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

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Newswise Post doc interviews in the Life Sciences are relatively unregulated compared to interviews for faculty positions. To find out if this lack of regulation promotes biases in post doc interviews, Dr. Nicholas Burnett and Dr.Stacey Combes of the Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior Department at U.C. Davis surveyed post docs in the life sciences at universities across the United States. They then analyzed responses from the 342 post docs who completed their surveys and tested how the interviews differed between post docs.

As to the impetus of their study, Burnett noted "I was inspired to start this study after reading a paper about the faculty hiring process, written by zlelm Sensoy and Robin DiAngleo, that said if we are truly committed to increasing diversity in academia, we must be willing to do everything differently. As a recently hired post doc, I realized there was relatively little institutional attention given to interviews for post docs, so I began wondering about the content and structure of post doc interviews, how interviews affect post doc diversity, and what we can do to change interviews for the better."

The data showed that the content and structure of interviews varied drastically between post docs, and that these differences were associated with race, ethnicity, and gender of the post docs, as well as other circumstances of the interviews. For example, a post doc's demographic background was linked to the interview length and whether they demonstrated a technical skill or gave a presentation during their interview, but these interview components were also associated with whether the post doc already knew the interviewer and whether the interview was held in person versus over the phone or internet.

When asked about results they may not have expected, Burnett had this to offer. "One of our surprising results was the disparity in interview length - minority females experienced shorter interviews than other demographic groups - and it has been shown in academic literature that lengthening interviews can help reduce implicit biases. One way of reducing barriers to post doc positions for scientists from under-represented groups could be to lengthen interviews, especially when interviewing multiple candidates for a single position."

"We hope that by identifying disparities in postdoc interviews, we can start a discussion among biologists that will lead to more standardized and equitable interviews for postdoctoral positions." Burnett said in regard to their goals for this study.

With a post doc position being integral to those who desire a lengthy career in Life Sciences, their research could indeed help universities see a need for restructuring their post doc interview process. No doubt this data could have a ripple effect of changes in store for future life science interviewees and interviewers alike.

Stacey Combes is an Associate Professor and Chancellor's Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior at U.C. Davis. She was chair of the Broadening Participation committee of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB) from 2016-2019, and currently serves as chair of the SICB Division of Comparative Biomechanics.

Nicholas Burnett is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior at U.C. Davis, and was a recipient of the National Science Foundation's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for Broadening Participation of Groups Underrepresented in Biology. He is currently a postdoctoral member of the Broadening Participation committee of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

"Post doc interviews in the Life Sciences: An often overlooked process that is susceptible to bias" by Dr. Nicholas Burnett and Dr. Stacey Combes of the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, University of California, U.C. Davis

burnettnp@gmail.com , sacombes@ucdavis.edu

Published by the Journal of Integrative Organismal Biology, December 1, 2019

URL:https://academic.oup.com/iob

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Post doc interviews in the life sciences may promote bias - Newswise