A+ Alzheimer's Advance

Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Uses

Ultrasound Technology

12 March 2015 -- Queensland Brain Insitute

Queensland scientists have found that non-invasive ultrasound technology can be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease and restore memory.

University of Queensland researchers discovered that the innovative drug-free approach breaks apart the neurotoxic amyloid plaques that result in memory loss and cognitive decline.

Welcoming the findings today at UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said they could have a wide impact for the community.

“The Government’s $9 million investment into this technology was to drive discoveries into clinics, and today’s announcement indicates that together with the Queensland Brain Institute, it was a worthwhile investment,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“I want my Government to encourage more of this type of innovative research.

“Our Advance Queensland initiative aims to increase research and discoveries like this and to put this state’s research at the forefront internationally by supporting local researchers and helping to keep them in Queensland.

“These exciting findings will hopefully be of benefit to all Australians in the future.”

QBI Founding Director Professor Perry Bartlett said the discovery – a result of ‘game-changing’ work performed at the Queensland Brain Institute’s Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research – was made possible through the support of the State and Federal Governments and philanthropic support led by the Clem Jones Foundation.

“The farsighted investment of government and philanthropic partners has allowed us to build the research excellence and capacity required to make major discoveries such as this,” Professor Perry Bartlett said.

“I believe the work opens up an entirely novel avenue for future therapeutic treatment.”

Clem Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research director Professor Jürgen Götz said the new treatment method could revolutionise Alzheimer’s treatment by restoring memory.

“We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics,” Professor Götz said.

“The ultrasound waves oscillate tremendously quickly, activating microglial cells that digest and remove the amyloid plaques that destroy brain synapses.

“The word ‘breakthrough’ is often mis-used, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach.”

Alzheimer’s affects more than two-thirds of dementia patients, and approximately a quarter of a million Australians.

The total number of dementia cases in Australia is expected to rise to 900,000 by 2050.

“With an ageing population placing an increasing burden on the health system, an important factor is cost, and other potential drug treatments using antibodies will be expensive,” Professor Götz said.

“In contrast, this method uses relatively inexpensive ultrasound and microbubble technology which is non-invasive and appears highly effective.

The approach is able to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier, activating mechanisms that clear toxic protein clumps and restoring memory functions.

“With our approach the blood-brain barrier’s opening is only temporary for a few hours, so it quickly restores its protective role,” Professor Götz said.

Research has been conducted using mice with an Alzheimer’s model, with the next step being to scale the research in higher animal models ahead of human clinical trials, which are at least two years away.

“This treatment restored memory function to the same level of normal healthy mice,” Professor Götz said.

“We’re also working on seeing whether this method clears toxic protein aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases other than Alzheimer’s and whether this also restores executive functions, including decision-making and motor control.”

Findings of the research, “Scanning ultrasound efficiently removes amyloid-β and restores memory in an Alzheimer's model”, are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=150641&CultureCode=en

Loneliness Shortens Life

Prescription for living longer:
Spend less time alone
New study finds isolation a risk factor for all ages, incomes
Brigham Young University, March 11, 2015

Ask people what it takes to live a long life, and they’ll say things like exercise, take Omega-3s, and see your doctor regularly.

Now research from Brigham Young University shows that loneliness and social isolation are just as much a threat to longevity as obesity.

“The effect of this is comparable to obesity, something that public health takes very seriously,” said Julianne Holt-Lunstad, the lead study author. “We need to start taking our social relationships more seriously.”

Loneliness and social isolation can look very different. For example, someone may be surrounded by many people but still feel alone. Other people may isolate themselves because they prefer to be alone. The effect on longevity, however, is much the same for those two scenarios.

The association between loneliness and risk for mortality among young populations is  actually greater than among older populations. Although older people are more likely to be lonely and face a higher mortality risk, loneliness and social isolation better predict premature death among populations younger than 65 years.

“Not only are we at the highest recorded rate of living alone across the entire century, but we’re at the highest recorded rates ever on the planet,” said Tim Smith, co-author of the study. “With loneliness on the rise, we are predicting a possible loneliness epidemic in the future.”

The study analyzed data from a variety of health studies. Altogether, the sample included more than 3 million participants from studies that included data for loneliness, social isolation, and living alone.

Controlling for variables such as socioeconomic status, age, gender, and pre-existing health conditions, they found that the effect goes both ways. The lack of social connections presents an added risk, and the existence of relationships provides a positive health effect. The new study appears in Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Previous research from Holt-Lunstad and Smith puts the heightened risk of mortality from loneliness in the same category as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and being an alcoholic. This current study suggests that not only is the risk for mortality in the same category as these well-known risk factors, it also surpasses health risks associated with obesity.

“In essence, the study is saying the more positive psychology we have in our world, the better we’re able to function not just emotionally but physically,” Smith said.

There are many things that help to subdue the effects of loneliness. With the evolution of the internet, people can keep in contact over distances that they couldn’t before. However, the superficiality of some online experiences may miss emotional context and depth. Too much texting with each other can actually hurt a romantic relationship, for example. The authors of that texting study note, however, that saying something sweet or kind in a text is universally beneficial.

http://news.byu.edu/archive15-mar-loneliness.aspx

New Test for Oxygen Within Cells

Quick, Easy and Early Diagnosis
with Rare Earth Ions

Medicinal Chemistry

University of Copenhagen, March 9, 2015 -- Lack of oxygen in cells is an indicator of serious diseases such as cerebral haemorrhages, stroke and cancer. Regrettably, measuring real-time oxygen concentration in living tissue is difficult with current technologies. Now a chemist from the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with chemists from Oxford University has invented a compound which measures oxygen in cells and other biological material with high precision. The compound is based on rare earths emitting coloured light that vary in colour with the amount of oxygen present in the sample. Because emissions are in the visible range of the spectrum, it will be possible to measure oxygen using the optical microscopes already present in most hospitals.

Two papers to describe one novel method

Thomas Just Sørensen is Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Nano-Science Centre, University of Copenhagen. Together with his English team and his Copenhagen partner, Tom Vosch, he has published the articles: ”Bimetallic lanthanide complexes that display a ratiometric response to oxygen concentration” in the periodical Chemical Sciences and ”Spectrally resolved confocal microscopy using lanthanide centred near-IR emission” in Chemical Communications. Both are Royal Society of Chemistry publications.

Proof of concept for easy quick and cheap oxygen measurements

According to Sørensen, the two articles constitute proof-of-concept that he is capable of measuring oxygen concentrations in an easy, quick and cheap manner but he is certain that development towards a useful technology will be speedy.

“We have made the microscope work already, and we are getting pretty good at synthesizing the rare earth containing molecules. Before the year is out, I am almost certain that we will see the first medical doctors using our method for measuring oxygen in cells”, says Thomas Just Sørensen.

Built-in control function makes for more precise measurements

Previous experiments have seen molecules which emit more light as the amount of oxygen diminishes. These, however, were incapable of measuring the amount of oxygen in cells, because one could not tell whether a large amount of light signal was caused by a low oxygen concentration or a large concentration of oxygen sensitive molecules. Sørensen’s new molecules solve this problem because they have a built in control-function.

The inventor who cannot see his own invention in action

The novel oxygen sensitive molecule is built with two rare earths, so called lanthanides. One lanthanide, europium, emits a constant red signal. The other, terbium, emits a green signal that increases with diminishing oxygen concentrations. Most physicians should be able to read the oxygen concentration with the naked eye, explains Thomas Just Sørensen.

“You simply deduct the amount of red light from the amount of green to get a precise reading of the oxygen level. Unfortunately, I cannot see how well my system works because I am red-green colour-blind. Lucky for me that optical microscopes are usually kitted out to convert colour values to numerical values”, smiles the inventor.

New method measures previously invisible phenomena

Oxygen-meters are already commercially available, but these are based on technologies which are poorly suited for biological samples, useless in a microscope and quite incapable of showing where the oxygen is located in a cell. Because Sørensen’s molecules work by way of a simple colour shift, they give a very exact indication of quantity as well as location of oxygen in a tissue sample or inside a cell. Furthermore, the microscopy technology developed by Vosch and Sørensen utilizes near infrared light which is highly compatible with biological studies, because it penetrates deeply into tissue, explains Sørensen.

“This is not just a method which is somewhat better. With this method you will be able to see things which used to be beyond measure. One example would be the difference in oxygen concentration inside and outside a cell”, says Thomas Just Sørensen.

Sørensen is particularly proud that the light signals are visible in an ordinary optical light microscope. Even though he readily admits that the microscope used for the initial testing is normal only when considered as individual components.

“The detector and light source was the same as on light microscopes found at any hospital, but my colleague Tom Vosch has optimized the microscope to the point where everything is almost beyond the possible. They said it couldn’t be done, but it works”, says Thomas Just Sørensen.

http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2015/03/quick-easy-and-early-diagnosis-with-rare-earth-ions/

High Rural Suicide Rate

Youth Suicide Rate in rural Areas Is
Nearly Double the Rate in Cities
Study shows gun use has decreased,
hanging increased in this population
By: Emily Caldwell, Ohio State University

COLUMBUS, Ohio – March 9, 2015 -- The adolescent and young-adult suicide rate in the United States was almost twice as high in rural settings than in urban areas between 1996 and 2010, and new research suggests that the gap appears to be widening.

Of the nearly 67,000 suicides analyzed, the rate of suicide for both males and females living in rural areas was about double the rate in cities.

The research, published in JAMA Pediatrics, also showed that gun use has decreased and that hanging has become a more common method of youth suicide for both males and females. Suicide rates by firearm and hanging were both disproportionately higher in rural areas than in urban regions for both sexes.

The findings suggest there is an urgent need to improve access to and availability of mental health care in rural areas, researchers say. The authors suggest that incorporating mental health care into primary care settings, providing care via telemedicine and creating school-based interventions might help reduce youth suicides in rural areas.

“These kinds of surveillance studies can really help us identify areas to target our prevention efforts, and it’s clear we need to target rural areas for primary prevention of suicide,” said Cynthia Fontanella, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and lead author of the study.

Fontanella cited access barriers to health care, geographic isolation and disproportionate stigma associated with mental illness as potential reasons for the observed disparities. “Rural America is beautiful, and many individuals live in close-knit communities. But in terms of access to services and perhaps some other factors, the cards may be stacked against them.”

Fontanella and colleagues analyzed mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics National Vital Statistics System. Between 1996 and 2010, 66,595 youths between age 10 and 24 died by suicide in the United States.

Among males, the rural versus urban suicide rate was 19.93 and 10.31 per 100,000, respectively, and for females, 4.40 and 2.39 per 100,000, respectively. When the researchers controlled for a number of other potential contributing factors, the rural and urban suicide rate disparity increased over time for males. The analysis also showed the suicide rate for young males is four times higher than for young females.

More than half of this population – 51.1 percent – committed suicide with a firearm, and 33.9 percent died by hanging. Poisoning accounted for 7.9 percent of suicides and other methods, such as jumping and transportation-related suicides, composed 7.1 percent of the deaths.

Clinicians have identified many risk factors for suicide over the years, but two in particular stand out, said John Campo, chair of psychiatry and behavioral health at Wexner Medical Center and senior author of the paper. About 90 percent of people who commit suicide suffer from a major psychiatric problem such as depression or bipolar disorder. Substance abuse, which can increase impulsivity and interfere with mood, is also frequently linked to suicides.

No studies have been done to try to pinpoint specific causes of this disparity in suicides based on where young people live. But these authors considered a number of potential contributing factors in the paper, all supported by previous research.

Between the dispersed nature of rural populations and a severe shortage of mental health practitioners, access to care is a major problem.

“If a rural child is depressed, it’s much harder to get state-of-the-art care. And it’s especially difficult to receive psychotherapy in a rural area,” Campo said.

States, 85 percent are in rural regions. And more than half of the counties in this country – all rural – do not have a single psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker serving the region.

This lack of access can compound the severity of illness, Fontanella said. People living in rural areas have to travel longer distances to see health care practitioners and wait longer for appointments, so by the time they receive care they may have developed more serious symptoms. And the culture of self-reliance in rural areas, as compared to urban living, may intensify the stigma associated with mental illness.

“There is a lot of pride around taking care of your own problems and turning to neighbors rather than professionals for help,” Fontanella said.

Because families living in rural areas tend to see a primary care practitioner for most of their health care, integrating mental health care into rural primary care settings – either with on-site practitioners or via remote video access – has promise, Campo said.

“It’s going to be hard to generate the numbers of mental-health providers to get where we need to go. So we need to address things qualitatively to improve the entire system of care, which will improve access,” he said.

This work was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which funds the Center for Clinical and Translational Science at Ohio State.

http://news.osu.edu/news/2015/03/09/youth-suicide-rate/

NASA to Probe Magnetic Explosions

By Dr. Tony Phillips, NASA, March 10, 2015: 

Magnetic reconnection could be the Universe's favorite way to make things explode.

It operates anywhere magnetic fields pervade space--which is to say almost everywhere. In the cores of galaxies, magnetic reconnection sparks explosions visible billions of light-years away. On the sun, it causes solar flares as powerful as a million atomic bombs. At Earth, it powers magnetic storms and auroras. It's ubiquitous.

The problem is, researchers can't explain it.

The basics are clear enough. Magnetic lines of force cross, cancel, reconnect and—Bang! Magnetic energy is unleashed, with charged-particles flying off near the speed of light. But how? How does the simple act of crisscrossing magnetic field lines trigger such a ferocious explosion?

"Something very interesting and fundamental is going on that we don't fully understand," says Jim Burch of the Southwest Research Institute.

NASA is about to launch a mission to get to the bottom of the mystery. It's called MMS, short for "Magnetospheric Multiscale" and it consists of four spacecraft that will fly through Earth's magnetic field, or "magnetosphere," to study reconnection in action.

"Earth's magnetosphere is a wonderful natural laboratory for studying this phenomenon," says Burch, the MMS Principal Investigator.

Slated for launch on March 12^th, the four spacecraft were designed, built and tested at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Each one is shaped like a giant hockey puck, about 4 meters in diameter and 1 meter in height.  In space, however, they are much larger.

"After launch, the spinning spacecraft will unfurl their electromagnetic sensors, which are at the end of wire booms as much as 60 meters long," says Craig Tooley, MMS Project Manager at Goddard.  "When fully extended, the sensors are as wide as a baseball field."

These sprawling, spinning probes will fly in precise formation, as close as 10 km apart and are guided by GPS satellites orbiting Earth far below them.  "We can maintain formation with an accuracy of only 100 meters," says Tooley. "This is crucial to our measurements."

Any new physics MMS observes could help provide clean energy on Earth.

"For many years, researchers have looked to fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for our planet," says Burch. "One approach, magnetic confinement fusion, has yielded very promising results with devices such as tokamaks. But there have been problems keeping the plasma contained in the chamber."

"One of the main problems is magnetic reconnection," he continues. "A spectacular result of reconnection is known as the 'sawtooth crash.' As heat in the tokamak builds up, the electron temperature reaches a peak, then 'crashes' to a lower value. Some of the hot plasma escapes. This is caused by reconnection of the containment field."

In light of this, you might suppose that fusion chambers would be a good place to study reconnection. But no, says Burch. Reconnection in tokamaks happens in a tiny volume only a few centimeters wide. It is practically impossible to build sensors small enough to probe the reconnection zone.

Earth's magnetosphere is much better. In the expansive magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet, the process plays out over volumes as large as tens of kilometers across, for instance, when reconnection at the sun propels plasma clouds toward Earth, where additional reconnection events then sparks auroras.

"We can fly spacecraft in and around it and get a good look at what's going on," he says.

That is what MMS will do: fly directly into the reconnection zone. The spacecraft are sturdy enough to withstand the energetics of reconnection events known to occur in Earth's

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2015/10mar_mms/

Tortious Interference

Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when a person intentionally damages the plaintiff’s contractual or other business relationships. This tort is broadly divided into two categories, one specific to contractual relationships (irrespective of whether they involve business), and the other specific to business relationships or activities (irrespective of whether they involve a contract).

Description

Tortious interference with contract rights can occur where the tortfeasor convinces a party to breach the contract against the plaintiff, or where the tortfeasor disrupts the ability of one party to perform his obligations under the contract, thereby preventing the plaintiff from receiving the performance promised. The classic example of this tort occurs when one party induces another party to breach a contract with a third party, in circumstances where the first party has no privilege to act as it does and acts with knowledge of the existence of the contract. Such conduct is termed tortious inducement of breach of contract.

Tortious interference with business relationships occurs where the tortfeasor acts to prevent the plaintiff from successfully establishing or maintaining business relationships. This tort may occur when a first party's conduct intentionally causes a second party not to enter into a business relationship with a third party that otherwise would probably have occurred. Such conduct is termed tortious interference with prospective business relations, expectations, or advantage or with prospective economic advantage.

In either of the above situations, the tortfeasor's conduct must be intentional. There is no cause of action for merely negligent interference with the performance of a contract.

Typical Examples

1. Tortious interference of business.- When false claims and accusations are made against a business or an individual's reputation in order to drive business away.
2. Tortious interference of contract.- When an individual uses "tort" (a wrongful act) to come between two parties' mutual contract.

Elements

Although the specific elements required to prove a claim of tortious interference vary from one jurisdiction to another, they typically include the following:

1. The existence of a contractual relationship or beneficial business relationship between two parties.
2. Knowledge of that relationship by a third party.
3. Intent of the third party to induce a party to the relationship to breach the relationship.
4. Lack of any privilege on the part of the third party to induce such a breach.
5. The contractual relationship is breached.
6. Damage to the party against whom the breach occurs.

The first element may, in employment-at-will jurisdictions, be held fulfilled in regards to a previously unterminated employer/employee relationship.

Damages

Typical legal damages for tortious interference include economic losses, if they can be proven with certainty, and mental distress. Additionally punitive damages may be awarded if malice on the part of the wrongdoer can be established.

Equitable remedies may include injunctive relief in the form of a negative injunction that would be used to prevent the wrongdoer from benefiting from any contractual relationship that may arise out of the interference, i.e., the performance of a singer who was originally contracted with the plaintiff to perform at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

Decency versus Resentment

From the Blog Author

I teach my "urban coyote" seminars to reaffirm two opinions that are also truths: 1) Human decency actually exists yet 2) Resentment is the dominant religion of modern America. Unfortunately, my side is losing popularity in the face of modern, publicly funded moral relativism. See this link – the most important story I’ve read in several years:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/…/why-our-children-d…/…

Central to the problem is that moral relativism MAKES RESENTMENT SEEM RESPECTABLE.  The resentful person, when told of his resentments, gaffs it off as a mere opinion of another person rather than a fact that should be respected.  But actual resentment, which is common, is never respectable -- see Solomon's book "The Passions” and its brilliant entry on resentment.