BioEd Online- Science Resources from Baylor College of Medicine

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Welcome to BioEd Online, the online educational resource for educators, students, and parents. BioEd Online utilizes state-of-the-art technology to give you instant access to reliable, cutting-edge information and educational tools for biology and related subjects. Our goal is to provide useful, accurate, and current information and materials that build upon and enhance the skills and knowledge of science educators. Developed under the guidance of our expert Editorial Board, BioEd Online offers the following high-quality resources.

• Streaming Video Presentations – View timely presentations given by thought leaders on education in biology and related subjects, classroom management, science standards, and other issues in education. Presentation topics include content reviews for prospective biology teachers, content updates for experienced teachers, research lab technique demonstrations, inquiry science, and assessment. In addition, BioEd Online offers helpful presentations for teachers in training as they prepare for the classroom experience.
• Slide Library – Customize exciting and relevant lesson plans and activities from hundreds of searchable slides developed by our Editorial Board and contributors. The slide library is updated regularly. Each slide is complete with talking points and references and can be downloaded into your own PowerPoint program for personal educational use.
• Editors’ News Picks – Stay current with science news selected by our Editorial Board. Check back each week for new science stories and related discussion questions to complement your ongoing science activities, and to stimulate an exchange of ideas in your classroom. All Editors’ Picks are maintained in our archive for easy access whenever you need them.

BioEd Online is regularly updated with pertinent new slides in the slide library, presentations on breakthrough research, reviews, and virtual workshops on educational approaches and materials. Stay current with the latest research from top educators in the country by bookmarking BioEd Online for later use!

Other resources of note

• A variety of free, interactive courses designed for science educators and other life-long learners seeking to increase their knowledge of key scientific subjects. Course offerings range from cutting edge genetics to topical environmental health content and the fascinating science of water. Materials are sorted by topic, making it easy locate the content most appropriate for you.
• BioEd Online’s library contains student storybooks, magazines, supplemental materials and other items integrated with teacher’s guides and lessons found on this website. Some items may be used as stand-alone reading and language arts activities.

How a little patch could free you from pesky mosquitoes and fight malaria

Gigaom

Mosquito season is in full swing, but new patch wants to save you from an itchy, scratchy summer – and help conquer malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses in the developing world.

Backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, and based on technology developed at the University of California at Riverside, the Kite Patch is a small square sticker the size of a nicotine patch that attaches to clothing. It claims to makes humans “invisible” to mosquitoes for 48 hours by blocking mosquitoes’ ability to detect carbon dioxide, which is their primary way of finding people to feast on. (If you want more details on how mosquitoes choose their victims, my colleague Barb Darrow recently wrote a little post on the topic.)

And, it’s all non-toxic: the company says the its active ingredients are considered safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meaning…

View original post 244 more words

NIH scientists find that proteins involved in immunity potentially cause cancer

 

 

Caption: This is Dmitry Gordenin, Ph.D., and Steven Roberts, Ph.D., NIEHS.

From a 15 July 2013 article at EurekAlert

A set of proteins involved in the body’s natural defenses produces a large number of mutations in human DNA, according to a study led by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. The findings suggest that these naturally produced mutations are just as powerful as known cancer-causing agents in producing tumors.

The proteins are part of a group called apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing enzyme catalytic polypeptide-like (APOBEC) cytidine deaminases. The investigators found that APOBEC mutations can outnumber all other mutations in some cancers, accounting for over two-thirds in some bladder, cervical, breast, head and neck, and lung tumors.

The scientists published their findings online July 14 in the journal Nature Genetics. Dmitry Gordenin, Ph.D., is corresponding author of the paper and a senior associate scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of NIH. He said scientists knew the main functions of APOBEC cytosine deaminases were to inactivate viruses that attack the body and prevent ancient viruses present in the human genome from moving around and causing disrupting mutations. Because they are so important to normal physiology, he and his collaborators were surprised to find a dark side to them — that of mutating human chromosomal DNA.

The study is a follow-up to one Gordenin and his group published in Molecular Cell in 2012, after they discovered APOBECs could generate clusters of mutations in some cancers.

		AUDIO: Dmitry Gordenin, Ph.D., NIEHS, discusses results of research published July 14, 2013 in Nature Genetics. Click here for more information.

“The presence of APOBEC clusters in the genome of tumor cells indicates that APOBEC enzymes could also have caused many mutations across the genome,” Gordenin said.

Gordenin’s team at NIEHS, comprised of scientists from the Chromosome Stability Group, headed by Michael Resnick, Ph.D., and the Integrative Bioinformatics Group, headed by David Fargo, Ph.D., took the 2012 research one step further by applying a modern data science approach.

The group collaborated with co-corresponding author Gad Getz, Ph.D., and other colleagues from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Mass. They looked for signs of genome-wide APOBEC mutagenesis in cancers listed in The Cancer Genome Atlas, a cancer database funded and managed by the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute, both part of NIH.

Using APOBEC’s distinctive DNA mutational signature, they examined approximately 1 million mutations in 2,680 cancer samples, and found that, in some tumors, nearly 70 percent of mutations in a given specimen resulted from APOBEC mutagenesis. The mutation pattern, which appeared in clusters and individual mutations, could affect many cancer-associated genes.

Steven Roberts, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow who works with Gordenin, is first author on both studies. He explained that since APOBECs are regulated by the immune system, which is responsive to many environmental factors, he believes there may be a significant environmental component to APOBEC mutagenesis.

“We hope that determining the environmental link to these mutations will lead to viable cancer prevention strategies,” Roberts said.

In upcoming work, he and Gordenin plan to address why APOBEC mutagenesis appears in some cancer types and not others.

Related articles

• Proteins Involved in Immunity That Potentially Cause Cancer Discovered (medindia.net)
• Scientists Discover That Proteins Involved In Immunity Potentially Cause Cancer (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Immunity Proteins Produce Cancer-Causing DNA Mutations (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Proteins associated with immunity may cause cancer (thehindu.com)
• Proteins associated with immunity may cause cancer (vancouverdesi.com)

 

Protecting the body in good times and bad

From the 15 July 2013 article at EurekAlert

Brandeis scientists bring us a step closer to understanding how to control cancer cells without harming healthy ones

The nasty side effects of radiation and chemotherapy are well known: fatigue, hair loss and nausea, to name a few. Cancer treatment can seem as harsh as the disease because it can’t differentiate healthy cells from cancerous cells, killing both.

But what if there were a way to control or stop the growth of cancer cells without harming other cells?

Brandeis biologist Michael T. Marr is one step closer to understanding how cells promote and inhibit protein synthesis — an essential part of cellular reproduction — during times of stress. His new paper, co-authored by graduate students Calla Olson, Marissa Donovan and Michael Spellberg, is published in eLife, an open access digital publication for life science and biomedicine research.

Marr and his team discovered a mechanism, like an emergency backup system, that allows cells to synthesize certain proteins while shutting down the production of others. Building proteins requires a chain reaction with a dozen moving parts, each triggering the next step. These chain reactions are called signaling pathways.

The pathway that interests Marr and his team is called the insulin and insulin-like receptor (IIS) pathway. It is part of the body’s emergency response system. When organisms are healthy and safe, the IIS pathway increases the activity of a protein complex called eIF4A, which helps in the synthesis of proteins.

But let’s say you’re not safe. You’re starving. Your body is being deprived of nutrients, forcing you to conserve energy and resources. The IIS pathway, sensitive to this stress, realizes something isn’t right, and sends a signal to stop eIF4A.

Protein synthesis screeches to a halt — for the most part.

Marr and his team discovered that the messages that build insulin receptor proteins have internal mechanisms allowing them to synthesize protein without the eIF4A kick-start. When the rest of the production line slows down, production of insulin receptors in the IIS ramps up. Why?

The hope is you’re about to find food. The insulin receptors help the IIS pathway recognize when it’s out of danger. The more receptors, the faster the IIS pathway can start ramping up protein production again. The same principle applies on the cellular level when cancerous cells overwhelm healthy cells, starving them of oxygen and nutrients — the healthy cells continue to produce insulin receptors.

“Even during times of stress, cells are stockpiling for good times,” says Marr.

The mechanism that allows synthesis of insulin receptors during stress is the same from flies to mammals, pointing to a response conserved in evolution, Marr says.

Though this research is still early, the more deeply scientists understand mechanisms involved in growth and inhibition, the better they can decipher diseases that rely on uncontrolled cell growth, like cancer.

Related articles

• Is There a Way to Control or Stop the Growth of Cancer Cells Without Harming Other Cells? (medindia.net)
• One Step Closer To Understanding How To Control Cancer Cells Without Harming Healthy Ones (medicalnewstoday.com)
• New Method of ‘Starving’ Cancer Cells Developed (medindia.net)
• Cancer cure just got closer: scientists harness our natural-born killers – the T cells – to target malign tumours (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)
• Treatment Offer New Hope in Quest for Non-Toxic Cancer Treatment (crystalcleandrinkingwaterblog.wordpress.com)
• Cancer’s Natural Enemy, Actually Starves It to Death (foodconsumer.org)

 

How cranberries impact infection-causing bacteria

From the 15 July 2013 article at EurkeAlert

How cranberries impact infection-causing bacteria

Research points to potential role for cranberry derivatives in implantable medical devices

		IMAGE: Professor Nathalie Tufenkji is in her McGill University lab. Click here for more information.

Consuming cranberry products has been anecdotally associated with prevention of urinary tract infections (UTIs) for over 100 years. But is this popular belief a myth, or scientific fact?

In recent years, some studies have suggested that cranberries prevent UTIs by hindering bacteria from sticking to the walls of the urinary tract, thanks to phytochemicals known as proanthocyanidins (PACs). Yet the mechanisms by which cranberry materials may alter bacterial behaviour have not been fully understood.

Now, researchers in McGill University’s Department of Chemical Engineering are shedding light on the biological mechanisms by which cranberries may impart protective properties against urinary tract and other infections. Two new studies, spearheaded by Prof. Nathalie Tufenkji, add to evidence of cranberries’ effects on UTI-causing bacteria. The findings also point to the potential for cranberry derivatives to be used to prevent bacterial colonization in medical devices such as catheters.

In research results published online last month in the Canadian Journal of Microbiology, Prof. Tufenkji and members of her laboratory report that cranberry powder can inhibit the ability of Proteus mirabilis, a bacterium frequently implicated in complicated UTIs, to swarm on agar plates and swim within the agar. The experiments also show that increasing concentrations of cranberry powder reduce the bacteria’s production of urease, an enzyme that contributes to the virulence of infections.

These results build on previous work by the McGill lab, showing that cranberry materials hinder movement of other bacteria involved in UTIs. A genome-wide analysis of an uropathogenic E. colirevealed that expression of the gene that encodes for the bacteria’s flagellar filament was decreased in the presence of cranberry PACs.

The team’s findings are significant because bacterial movement is a key mechanism for the spread of infection, as infectious bacteria literally swim to disseminate in the urinary tract and to escape the host immune response.

“While the effects of cranberry in living organisms remain subject to further study, our findings highlight the role that cranberry consumption might play in the prevention of chronic infections,” Tufenkji says. “More than 150 million cases of UTI are reported globally each year, and antibiotic treatment remains the standard approach for managing these infections. The current rise of bacterial resistance to antibiotics underscores the importance of developing another approach.”

Another recent study led by Tufenkji in collaboration with McGill professor Showan Nazhat, a biomaterials expert at the Department of Mining and Materials Engineering, finds that cranberry-enriched silicone substrates impaired the spread of Proteus mirabilis. Those results, published online in the journal Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces, point to potential use for cranberry derivatives to hinder the spread of germs in implantable medical devices such as catheters, which are frequently implicated in UTIs.

“Based on the demonstrated bioactivity of cranberry, its use in catheters and other medical devices could someday yield considerable benefits to patient health,” Tufenkji says.

 

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Funding for the new studies was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs program, the Wisconsin Cranberry Board, the Cranberry Institute, the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies, and the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec.

Link to the Canadian Journal of Microbiology article: http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjm-2012-0744#.UctRHjvqlLc

Link to the Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927776513002348

 

Related articles

• How cranberries impact infection-causing bacteria (esciencenews.com)
• Cranberries Weaken UTI Bacteria’s Ability To Be Infectious (medicaldaily.com)
• Cranberries For Urinary Tract Infections – New Evidence (medicalnewstoday.com)
• How cranberries impact infection-causing bacteria (federalnutrition.com)
• Urinary Tract Infections in the Elderly (dtnhomecare.wordpress.com)

 

Vitamins and minerals can boost energy and enhance mood

From the 17 July 2013 EurekAlert

Vitamins and minerals can boost energy and enhance mood

CHICAGO- Vitamin and mineral supplements can enhance mental energy and well-being not only for healthy adults but for those prone to anxiety and depression, according to a July 15 panel discussion at the 2013 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo® held at McCormick Place.

Bonnie Kaplan, Ph.D., professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, said Monday vitamins and mineral supplements can be the alternative to increasing psychiatric medicines for symptom relief of anxiety and depression. The supplements, she said, also can provide the mental energy necessary to manage stress, enhance mood and reduce fatigue.

In a series of studies she recently conducted in Canada, Kaplan found of the 97 adults with diagnosed mood disorders who kept a three-day food record, a higher intake of vitamins and minerals were significantly correlated with overall enhanced mental functioning.

Other vitamins that have been known to enhance mood, said C.J. Geiger, Ph.D., president of Geiger & Associates, LLC, and research associate professor in the division of nutrition at the University of Utah, include 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5 HTP), Vitamins B and D, as well as ginkgo biloba and Omega 3.

In her research, Geiger has found most adults define energy throughout the day as peaking mid-morning, falling to a valley in the afternoon after lunch and recovering with a pickup in late afternoon, settling back down before bedtime. However, these peaks and valleys did vary with gender, age and climate. She said many adults are known to use coffee, soft drinks, chocolate and candy bars as well as energy drinks, bars and chews with high sugar boosts to maintain energy throughout the day. She found other adults ate more frequent, smaller meals to sustain energy while making time for lots of rest and exercise.

 

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About IFT

For more than 70 years, IFT has existed to advance the science of food. Our nonprofit scientific society—more than 18,000 members from more than 100 countries—brings together food scientists, technologists and related professions from academia, government, and industry. For more information, please visit ift.org.

 

 

Related articles

• Taking Vitamins And Minerals Boosts Energy And Enhances Mood (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Minerals and Vitamins Enhance Mood and Increase Energy Levels (hngn.com)
• Vitamins Boost Energy and Mood in People Prone to Depression (counselheal.com)
• Control your anxiety by taking vitamin and mineral supplements (gohealthsite.com)

 

Microbes can influence evolution of their hosts

From the 18 July 2013 article at EurkAlert

Microbes can influence evolution of their hosts

New evidence supporting the hologenome theory of evolution

		IMAGE: This is an illustration of the tree of life created in microbial culture. Click here for more information.

You are not just yourself. You are also the thousands of microbes that you carry. In fact, they represent an invisible majority that may be more you than you realize.

These microscopic fellow travelers are collectively called the microbiome. Realization that every species of plant and animal is accompanied by a distinctive microbiome is old news. But evidence of the impact that these microbes have on their hosts continues to grow rapidly in areas ranging from brain development to digestion to defense against infection to producing bodily odors.

Now, contrary to current scientific understanding, it also appears that our microbial companions play an important role in evolution. A new study, published online on July 18 by the journal Science, has provided direct evidence that these microbes can contribute to the origin of new species by reducing the viability of hybrids produced between males and females of different species. [my emphasis]

This study provides the strongest evidence to date for the controversial hologenomic theory of evolution, which proposes that the object of Darwin’s natural selection is not just the individual organism as he proposed, but the organism plus its associated microbial community. (The hologenome encompasses the genome of the host and the genomes of its microscopic symbiotes.)

“It was a high-risk proposition. The expectation in the field was that the origin of species is principally driven by genetic changes in the nucleus. Our study demonstrates that both the nuclear genome and the microbiome must be considered in a unified framework of speciation,” said Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Seth Bordenstein who performed the study with post-doctoral fellow Robert Brucker.

They conducted their research using three species of the jewel wasp Nasonia. These tiny, match-head sized wasps parasitize blowflies and other pest flies, which make them useful for biological control.

“The wasps have a microbiome of 96 different groups of microorganisms,” [My emphasis]said Brucker. Two of the species they used (N. giraulti and N. longicornis) only diverged about 400,000 years ago so they are closely related genetically. This closeness is also reflected in their microbiomes, which are quite similar. The third species (N. vitripennis), on the other hand, diverged about a million years ago so there are greater differences in both its genome and microbiome, he explained.

The mortality of hybrid offspring from the two closely related species was relatively low, about 8 percent, while the mortality rate of hybrid offspring between either of them and N. vitripennis was quite high, better than 90 percent, the researchers established.

“The microbiomes of viable hybrids looked extremely similar to those of their parents, but the microbiomes of those that did not survive looked chaotic and totally different,” Brucker reported.

The researchers showed that the incompatibilities that were killing the hybrids had a microbial basis by raising the wasps in a microbe-free environment. They were surprised to find that the germ-free hybrids survived just as well as purebred larvae. But when they gave the germ-free hybrids gut microbes from regular hybrids, their survival rate plummeted.

“Our results move the controversy of hologenomic evolution from an idea to an observed phenomenon,” said Bordenstein. “The question is no longer whether the hologenome exists, but how common it is?”

 

 

Related articles

• Microbes Influence Evolution Of Their Hosts – Research Confirms Hologenomic Evolution (planetsave.com)
• Our Destiny Lies Not In Our Stars, But In Our Bacteria (psmag.com)
• Gut Microbes Can Split a Species (news.sciencemag.org)
• Microbes can influence evolution of their hosts (sciencedaily.com)
• Gut microbes may put barrier between species (sciencenews.org)

 

New PTC Research Finds Teen Girls the New Target of Sexual Exploitation on TV

Parents Television Council (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the summary of the report at Full Text Reports

 

July 18, 2013

New PTC Research Finds Teen Girls the New Target of Sexual Exploitation on TV
Source: Parents Television Council

New research from the Parents Television Council’s “4 Every Girl Campaign” found that underage female characters on primetime broadcast television are more likely to be presented in sexually exploitative scenes than adult women, and the appearance of underage female characters in a sexually exploitative scene increased the probability that the scene would be presented as humorous.

Study results revealed that out of 238 scripted episodes which aired during the study period, 150 episodes (63%) contained sexual content in scenes that were associated with females and 33% of the episodes contained sexual content that rose to the level of sexual exploitation.

The likelihood that sexual exploitation would be considered humorous increased to 43% when the sexual exploitation involved underage female characters. Topics that targeted underage girls and were presented as humorous included: sexual violence, sex trafficking, sexual harassment, pornography, and stripping.

 

 

 

Related articles

• Study Finds Sexual Exploitation of Underage Girls on TV (entertainment.time.com)
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• Teenage female characters often sexually exploited on TV, study finds (newsday.com)
• New PTC Research Finds Teen Girls the New Target of Sexual Exploitation on TV (paramuspost.com)
• Network Television Is None Too Kind to Teen Girls (jezebel.com)
• Female TV characters are sexual targets, says new study (cbsnews.com)
• Sexual exploitation of underage girls rampant on primetime, Parents Television Council says (scooprocket.com)

 

2013 World Drug Report: stability in use of traditional drugs, alarming rise in new psychoactive substances

From the summary at Full Text Reports

 

2013 World Drug Report: stability in use of traditional drugs, alarming rise in new psychoactive substances
Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

The 2013 World Drug Report released today in Vienna shows that, while the use of traditional drugs such as heroin and cocaine seems to be declining in some parts of the world, prescription drug abuse and new psychoactive substance [NPS]

An arrangement of psychoactive drugs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

abuse is growing. In a special high-level event of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov urged concerted action to prevent the manufacture, trafficking and abuse of these substances.

Marketed as ‘legal highs’ and ‘designer drugs’, NPS are proliferating at an unprecedented rate and posing unforeseen public health challenges. The report shows that the number of NPS reported to UNODC rose from 166 at the end of 2009 to 251 by mid-2012, an increase of more than 50 per cent. For the first time, the number of NPS exceeded the total number of substances under international control (234). Since new harmful substances have been emerging with unfailing regularity on the drug scene, the international drug control system is now challenged by the speed and creativity of the NPS phenomenon.

This is an alarming drug problem – but the drugs are legal. Sold openly, including via the internet, NPS, which have not been tested for safety, can be far more dangerous than traditional drugs. Street names, such as “spice”, “meow-meow” and “bath salts” mislead young people into believing that they are indulging in low-risk fun. Given the almost infinite scope to alter the chemical structure of NPS, new formulations are outpacing efforts to impose international control. While law enforcement lags behind, criminals have been quick to tap into this lucrative market. The adverse effects and addictive potential of most of these uncontrolled substances are at best poorly understood.

The global picture for the use of traditional drugs such as heroin and cocaine shows some stability. In Europe, heroin use seems to be declining. Meanwhile, the cocaine market seems to be expanding in South America and in the emerging economies in Asia. Use of opiates (heroin and opium), on the other hand, remains stable (around 16 million people, or 0.4 per cent of the population aged 15-64), although a high prevalence of opiate use has been reported from South-West and Central Asia, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and North America.

 

 

 

Related articles

• 2013 World Drug Report notes stability in use of traditional drugs and points to alarming rise in new psychoactive substances (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• UK legal high market is EU’s largest (bbc.co.uk)
• UN says Africa consuming more cocaine (ghanabusinessnews.com)
• UN World Drug Report 2013 – Alarming rise in NPS (drughealth.blogspot.com)
• Warwickshire’s Drug & Alcohol Action team work to tackle global increase in ‘legal highs’ (safeinwarwickshire.wordpress.com)
• Prohibitionists Say the Drugs They Banned Are Safer Than the Ones They Didn’t (reason.com)
• New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) 2013 (dailyaltreport.wordpress.com)
• Lure, Variety of Designer Drugs is Alarming, U.N. Agency Says (nlm.nih.gov)

 

Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2011: National Estimates of Drug – Related Emergency Department Visits

drugs redux (Photo credit: Phoenix Dark-Knight)

 

Summary of the paper from Full Text Reports

 

Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2011: National Estimates of Drug – Related Emergency Department Visits (PDF)
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

This publication presents national estimates of drug – related visits to hospital emergency departments (EDs) for the calendar year 2011 , based on data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). Also presented are comparisons of 20 11 estimates with those for 2004, 200 9, and 2010 . DAWN is a public health surveillance system that monitors drug – related ED visits for the Nation and for selected metropolitan areas. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is the agency responsible for DAWN. SAMHSA is required to collect data on drug – related ED visits under S ection 505 of the Public Health Service Act.

DAWN relies on a nationally representative sample of general, non – Federal hospitals operating 24 – hour EDs , with oversampling of hospitals in selected metropolitan areas. In each participating hospital, ED medical records are reviewed retrospectively to find the ED visits that involved recent drug use. All types of drugs — illegal drugs, prescription drugs, over – the – counter pharmaceuticals (e.g., dietary supplements, cough medicine), and substances inhaled for their psychoact ive effects — are included. Alcohol is considered an illicit drug when consumed by patients aged 20 or younger. For patients aged 21 or older, though, alcohol is reported only when it is used in conjunction with other drugs.

Marked findings of this report a re (a) a 29 percent increase in the number of drug – related ED visits involving illicit drugs in the short term between 2009 and 2011 ; (b) simultaneous, short – term increases in the involvement of b oth illicit and licit stimulant – like drugs ; and (c) some ind ications that the pace of increases in pharmaceutical involvement is slowing down.

 

Related articles

• Parents Underestimate Influence over Teens’ Substance Abuse (nlm.nih.gov)
• Illegal drug trafficking obstacle to development – UN (ghanabusinessnews.com)
• Giving Maine babies a chance at a drug-free life (bangordailynews.com)
• Environments That Can Lead To A Higher Chance Of Drug Abuse (beckycorshia.wordpress.com)
• Family Conflict Leads to Aggression and Drug Abuse for Boys (counselheal.com)

 

Using Behavioral Indicators to Help Detect Potential Violent Acts A Review of the Science Base

Reminded of a phrase used by one of my college professors.
“Now that you have this information, what are you going to do with it?”

In this case, when one has information about a person’s behavior, what does one do?
Especially when it seems the person might be predisposed to violent acts.
Does one find a way to commit him or her to a mental institution? Arrest him or her on some other charge to remove him or her from the general population? Find some way to get the person help as an out patient?

From the summary of the report at Full Text Reports

Government organizations have put substantial effort into detecting and thwarting terrorist and insurgent attacks by observing suspicious behaviors of individuals at transportation checkpoints and elsewhere. This report reviews the scientific literature relating to observable, individual-level behavioral indicators that might — along with other information — help detect potential violent attacks. The report focuses on new or nontraditional technologies and methods, most of which exploit (1) data on communication patterns, (2) “pattern-of-life” data, and/or (3) data relating to body movement and physiological state. To help officials set priorities for special attention and investment, the report proposes an analytic framework for discussion and evaluation; it also urges investment in cost-effectiveness analysis and more vigorous, routine, and sustained efforts to measure real-world effectiveness of methods. One cross-cutting conclusion is that methods for behavioral observation are typically not reliable enough to stand alone; success in detection will depend on information fusion across types of behaviors and time. How to accomplish such fusion is understudied. Finally, because many aspects of using behavioral observations are highly controversial, both scientifically and because of privacy and civil-liberties concerns, the report sharpens the underlying perspectives and suggests ways to resolve some of the controversy while significantly mitigating problems that definitely exist.

 

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• A New Moral Treatment (city-journal.org)
• South Carolina Psychiatric Patient Stuck 38 Days in ER – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• On being Sane in Insane Places (opheliasmirror.org)