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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Angela Hart\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who knew playing video games might be good for you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A provocative \u003ca href=\"http://gazzaleylab.ucsf.edu/home/gazzaleylab/Anguera_Nature_2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">new study \u003c/a>from researchers at UC San Francisco shows that playing a specially designed video game increased the ability to multitask for people in their 60s, 70s and 80s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adam Gazzaley of UCSF's Neuroscience Imaging Center led the study. He recruited 174 people over 60 to play NeuroRacer, a custom-built game that forced participants to navigate winding roads, quickly turn left and right, go uphill and downhill -- and then click a button whenever a distracting green sign pops up. Take a look:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe src=\"http://www.npr.org/templates/event/embeddedVideo.php?storyId=218892225&mediaId=\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The participants played the video game three times a week for a month and improved cognitive functions of the brain, not only in multitasking but also in paying attention for longer time spans. In fact, they improved so much that they reached the level of an untrained 20-year-old. This is the first time this kind of improvement has been demonstrated, the researchers noted in their study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gazzaley explained more on \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201309101000\" target=\"_blank\">KQED's \"Forum\u003c/a>\" recently. He said the idea is to identify the brain's \"plasticity,\" meaning its ability to change even as it ages -- a concept that brain researchers haven't always thought possible.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We've been showing in the brain what happens as we get older,\" Gazzaley said. \"Working memory and sustained attention decline. After telling that sort of bad news for the last decade, around five years ago, I got inspired to see if we could do anything about it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The overall goal, Gazzaley said, was to identify what changes in the brain by targeting what he called the \"sweet spot\" in testing study participants. The video game was designed at a level where it's not too difficult to be frustrating, but not so easy that it becomes boring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We think that this maximally targets plasticity in the brain by pushing it right at that level of your ability,\" Gazzaley told \"Forum\" host Michael Krasny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study was published in the journal Nature. The authors wrote that \"a custom-designed video game can ... serve as a powerful tool for cognitive enhancement.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gazzaley acknowledged that his approach has its critics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think that the field is controversial, but not because of the foundational concept that the brain is plastic and can change,\" Gazzaley said. \"Every neuroscientist I've ever met believes in the plasticity of the brain. The question is -- and I guess the controversy that ensues around it is -- what is the most appropriate way of tapping that plasticity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In designing the study, Gazzaley took his initial idea to his video game friends, who developed the game. Gazzaley was aware of earlier research showing that first-person shooter video games played by younger adults also improved brain functions, such as distraction resistance and the ability to maintain attention levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's exciting,\" Gazzaley said. \"It shows that video games and the dynamics involved in them can be used to have very powerful impacts on the brain, especially when targeted.\" He said he doesn't expect that this one study is a definitive answer \"but rather a step in how we can go about carefully developing and then validating our tools to change the brain in an impactful way.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gazzaley and other researchers are now using the brain-scanning technology built into NeuroRacer to develop more advanced versions of the game, and continue to experiment on improving brain functions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In terms of being balanced, this does not imply that all video games are effective,\" Gazzaley said. \"There's a lot more research that needs to be done to understand it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Learn more:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Listen to Adam Gazzaley on KQED's Forum:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cobject width=\"335\" height=\"85\" classid=\"d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\">\u003cparam name=\"flashvars\" value=\"file=http://www.kqed.org/radio/archives/R201309101000.xml\">\u003cparam name=\"src\" value=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/flash/kqedplayer.swf\">\u003cembed width=\"335\" height=\"85\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/flash/kqedplayer.swf\" flashvars=\"file=http://www.kqed.org/radio/archives/R201309101000.xml\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Who knew playing video games might be good for you?\r\n\r\nA provocative new study from researchers at UC San Francisco showed that playing a specially designed video game increased the ability to multitask for people in their 60s, 70s and 80s.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The participants played the video game three times a week for a month and improved cognitive functions of the brain, not only in multitasking but also in paying attention for longer time spans. In fact, they improved so much that they reached the level of an untrained 20-year-old. This is the first time this kind of improvement has been demonstrated, the researchers noted in their study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gazzaley explained more on \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201309101000\" target=\"_blank\">KQED's \"Forum\u003c/a>\" recently. He said the idea is to identify the brain's \"plasticity,\" meaning its ability to change even as it ages -- a concept that brain researchers haven't always thought possible.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We've been showing in the brain what happens as we get older,\" Gazzaley said. \"Working memory and sustained attention decline. After telling that sort of bad news for the last decade, around five years ago, I got inspired to see if we could do anything about it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The overall goal, Gazzaley said, was to identify what changes in the brain by targeting what he called the \"sweet spot\" in testing study participants. The video game was designed at a level where it's not too difficult to be frustrating, but not so easy that it becomes boring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We think that this maximally targets plasticity in the brain by pushing it right at that level of your ability,\" Gazzaley told \"Forum\" host Michael Krasny.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study was published in the journal Nature. The authors wrote that \"a custom-designed video game can ... serve as a powerful tool for cognitive enhancement.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gazzaley acknowledged that his approach has its critics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I think that the field is controversial, but not because of the foundational concept that the brain is plastic and can change,\" Gazzaley said. \"Every neuroscientist I've ever met believes in the plasticity of the brain. The question is -- and I guess the controversy that ensues around it is -- what is the most appropriate way of tapping that plasticity.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In designing the study, Gazzaley took his initial idea to his video game friends, who developed the game. Gazzaley was aware of earlier research showing that first-person shooter video games played by younger adults also improved brain functions, such as distraction resistance and the ability to maintain attention levels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's exciting,\" Gazzaley said. \"It shows that video games and the dynamics involved in them can be used to have very powerful impacts on the brain, especially when targeted.\" He said he doesn't expect that this one study is a definitive answer \"but rather a step in how we can go about carefully developing and then validating our tools to change the brain in an impactful way.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gazzaley and other researchers are now using the brain-scanning technology built into NeuroRacer to develop more advanced versions of the game, and continue to experiment on improving brain functions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"In terms of being balanced, this does not imply that all video games are effective,\" Gazzaley said. \"There's a lot more research that needs to be done to understand it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Learn more:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Listen to Adam Gazzaley on KQED's Forum:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cobject width=\"335\" height=\"85\" classid=\"d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\">\u003cparam name=\"flashvars\" value=\"file=http://www.kqed.org/radio/archives/R201309101000.xml\">\u003cparam name=\"src\" value=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/flash/kqedplayer.swf\">\u003cembed width=\"335\" height=\"85\" type=\"application/x-shockwave-flash\" src=\"http://www.kqed.org/assets/flash/kqedplayer.swf\" flashvars=\"file=http://www.kqed.org/radio/archives/R201309101000.xml\">\u003c/embed>\u003c/object>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Click to “Like” My Genome: Home Genetic Testing Goes Social",
"headTitle": "Click to “Like” My Genome: Home Genetic Testing Goes Social | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8176\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/Pitfall_Atari.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8176 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/Pitfall_Atari.jpg\" alt=\"With personalized genomics, pitfalls in our imagination become real insights into threats to our health.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">With personalized genomics, imagined dangers could become real insights about our health. (Image: Activision)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Remember the Activision game \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhXMYw1lXY0\">Pitfall!\u003c/a>, back in the ‘80s? Your guy ran through a blocky two-dimensional jungle, swinging on a vine of pixels over alligator-infested bogs. Was he running toward or away from something? You didn’t care. Sometimes the chasms disappeared and reappeared beneath your feet. If you fell into quicksand or landed on a rattlesnake, you died. No big deal. It was just a game, lived in the moment. You were evading or finding peril as it scrolled across the screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward 20 years, to when we first heard it was possible for people to sequence their genomes. I was intrigued. This was around the time that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.genome.gov/10001772\">Human Genome Project\u003c/a> was nearing completion. Soon, I imagined, we all might be offered a chance to run through life with a new ability to sense what dangers lay ahead, lurking in our genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with its six-digit price point, genetic testing was a high-end game out of reach for most of us. In some ways, this is still the case. \u003cem>Whole genome\u003c/em> sequencing, which spells out all six billion letters of a person’s DNA, is still prohibitively expensive and has to be ordered by a doctor. But now it is possible to order a genetic scan of nearly a million key spots on one’s DNA for only $99 from \u003ca href=\"http://www.23andme.com/\">23andMe\u003c/a>, a Mountain View company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, a biotech investor on the Google family tree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, personalized genomics was a game I could afford. The $99 is one tenth of what the test originally cost when the company began offering it in 2007. Curiosity lured me in: I wanted to learn more about my heredity and my health. But I didn’t expect to find a whole new breed of social network, an online community structured not around shared interests, physical proximity, or social relationships, but around bits of shared DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">I wanted to learn more about my heredity and my health. But I didn’t expect to find a whole new breed of social network.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Grabbing the rope was simple. I visited the company’s website, clicked on the huge green invitation to “Get to Know You,” paid up and became a member. A few days later, the smartly-packaged kit was waiting when I returned home from work. Inside were a tiny plastic vial and a smaller box to return the sealed saliva sample.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I spat. As I held the sample, I felt oddly protective. Then I felt a flutter of anxiety. Should I be sending these defenseless drops of myself into the clutches of faceless white coats? I have often worked as a freelancer or in other nontraditional modes, and, like so many of my fellow Americans, am used to taking a DIY approach to health care to the degree that I can. But still I worried, could my results be used to deny me health coverage, or otherwise discriminate against me?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I didn’t worry that much, and I slid the package into the corner mailbox the next morning. An existing law known as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/gina.cfm\">Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act\u003c/a> (GINA), signed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/the-genetic-inf/\">George W. Bush in 2008\u003c/a> protects Americans against discrimination based on genetic information. The law is far from iron-clad; it doesn’t cover long-term health, life or disability insurance. But there’s also \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/news/health/obamacare/obamacare-guide.jsp\">Obama’s health care law\u003c/a>, coming into effect in 2014, which should moot the point, because even if loopholes currently exist in the GINA law, the president’s healthcare act aims to further limit discrimination based on preexisting conditions. We’ll have to wait to see how well it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But my willingness to outsource my data goes beyond feeling secure about privacy protections; it’s also about a new way of moving in the world. I’ve never been as protective of my identity as some people, but I now care even less. I sometimes make long personal phone calls on busy city streets, an activity I once found tacky and embarrassing. I’ve gone on internet dates. I post updates and pictures of myself on Facebook, to be perused by friends and “friends” alike. Curating my public persona seems like a lot of trouble, and ultimately pointless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, I’m of the world. And the world is not in a very private mood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not everyone shares (or can afford to share) this devil-may-care attitude when it comes to his or her genetic information. Some people have good reason to believe that they might be prone to certain illnesses, including incapacitating, contagious and/or fatal ones. Or they may carry mutations that might affect potential offspring. Or maybe they merely chafe at the image of their precious DNA shelved in a vault somewhere, as in the final sequence of \u003cem>Raiders of the Lost Ark.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8172\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/raiders_of_the_lost_ark2-e1378511556309-288x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8172 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/raiders_of_the_lost_ark2-e1378511556309-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"Genetic samples sent by 23andMe customers can be stored indefinitely to be studied by scientists.\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ca href=\"http://second-reel.blogspot.com/2010/07/homage-reference-and-free-association.html\">Genetic samples sent by 23andMe customers can be stored indefinitely to be studied by scientists. \u003c/a>\u003cbr>(Image: Lucasfilm)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To assuage these fears, 23andMe offers a menu of fates for both your physical sample and your data. On the conservative end, you can choose to have both destroyed after you receive your results. On the other end of the spectrum, you can allow the company to keep your DNA and study it ad infinitum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While 23andMe offers privacy options, the company regularly hints that it would be \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/about/values/\">noble of you to reveal all (in the interest of science)\u003c/a>, and it uses an enticing interface to hustle users for more information. For example, with a feature called “Quick Questions,” you can deliver substantial amounts of self-reported data on the web site before your saliva sample has even arrived at the lab. The more data 23andMe accumulates and can correlate with customers’ self-reported info, the deeper the ocean from which it can fish for new drugs and treatments. Using this “Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information,” the company contributes to \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/for/scientists/\">papers in peer-reviewed journals\u003c/a>, and in theory could work with third parties to market new drugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It runs a good game, too. You may be made of stronger stuff, but when someone asks me a simple personal question with the promised reward of better self-understanding, I respond like a rat tapping a lever, or a teenager hitting ‘Start’ on a faux-wood-paneled game console.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>How would you describe your current weight?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>When you travel, do you prefer your itinerary to be planned in advance or spontaneous?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Do you cry easily?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Do you have stretch marks on your hips, thighs, or backs of your arms?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>When you’re in the mood for a snack, what kind of snack do you usually reach for?\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I waited for my results, I kept coming back to the site to answer questions and explore research on genetically influenced traits such as hair curliness, shyness and the tendency to create systems out of chaos. I found it irresistible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>23andMe also hosts a copious amount of (over)sharing: every trait, ancestry query or medical pitfall has its own group in which customers can discuss it. In hundreds of forums, seekers like me reach out to each other to fill in the gaps of their genetic stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8173\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/23me-2-compressed-e1378836487128.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8173 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/23me-2-compressed-e1378836487128.jpg\" alt=\"23me-2-compressed\" width=\"640\" height=\"421\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">23andMe customers gather in forums to discuss everything from shared genetic mutations to the search for long-lost family. (Arwen Curry/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I realized that once my results were in, I would be able to see — and chat with — people genetically related to me around the world who had also taken the test. At first, I scoffed at this. Don’t people have enough “friends” without having “family,” too? But it was clear this was no fringe activity. These networks were overflowing with posts, comments and discussions, connecting people around the world by their genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as I was beginning to get saturated with other people’s data, an email arrived:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Dear Arwen,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your 23andMe results are now available!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>>Log in now to view your results and start personalizing your 23andMe experience.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Ready to swing out over the abyss, I wondered, if I \u003cem>did\u003c/em> have a trait, mutation or disease, would I reach out to this group of online strangers to talk about it? If I learned I had distant cousins, would I want to talk to them, even expand what I thought of as family?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have you taken the spit test? If you could be part of a community based on your DNA would you join? Add your thoughts to the comments below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In my next post, I will share some of my test results and introduce you to some of the people I met along the way. Stay tuned.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8176\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/Pitfall_Atari.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8176 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/Pitfall_Atari.jpg\" alt=\"With personalized genomics, pitfalls in our imagination become real insights into threats to our health.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">With personalized genomics, imagined dangers could become real insights about our health. (Image: Activision)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Remember the Activision game \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhXMYw1lXY0\">Pitfall!\u003c/a>, back in the ‘80s? Your guy ran through a blocky two-dimensional jungle, swinging on a vine of pixels over alligator-infested bogs. Was he running toward or away from something? You didn’t care. Sometimes the chasms disappeared and reappeared beneath your feet. If you fell into quicksand or landed on a rattlesnake, you died. No big deal. It was just a game, lived in the moment. You were evading or finding peril as it scrolled across the screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward 20 years, to when we first heard it was possible for people to sequence their genomes. I was intrigued. This was around the time that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.genome.gov/10001772\">Human Genome Project\u003c/a> was nearing completion. Soon, I imagined, we all might be offered a chance to run through life with a new ability to sense what dangers lay ahead, lurking in our genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But with its six-digit price point, genetic testing was a high-end game out of reach for most of us. In some ways, this is still the case. \u003cem>Whole genome\u003c/em> sequencing, which spells out all six billion letters of a person’s DNA, is still prohibitively expensive and has to be ordered by a doctor. But now it is possible to order a genetic scan of nearly a million key spots on one’s DNA for only $99 from \u003ca href=\"http://www.23andme.com/\">23andMe\u003c/a>, a Mountain View company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, a biotech investor on the Google family tree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, personalized genomics was a game I could afford. The $99 is one tenth of what the test originally cost when the company began offering it in 2007. Curiosity lured me in: I wanted to learn more about my heredity and my health. But I didn’t expect to find a whole new breed of social network, an online community structured not around shared interests, physical proximity, or social relationships, but around bits of shared DNA.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">I wanted to learn more about my heredity and my health. But I didn’t expect to find a whole new breed of social network.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Grabbing the rope was simple. I visited the company’s website, clicked on the huge green invitation to “Get to Know You,” paid up and became a member. A few days later, the smartly-packaged kit was waiting when I returned home from work. Inside were a tiny plastic vial and a smaller box to return the sealed saliva sample.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I spat. As I held the sample, I felt oddly protective. Then I felt a flutter of anxiety. Should I be sending these defenseless drops of myself into the clutches of faceless white coats? I have often worked as a freelancer or in other nontraditional modes, and, like so many of my fellow Americans, am used to taking a DIY approach to health care to the degree that I can. But still I worried, could my results be used to deny me health coverage, or otherwise discriminate against me?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I didn’t worry that much, and I slid the package into the corner mailbox the next morning. An existing law known as the \u003ca href=\"http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/gina.cfm\">Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act\u003c/a> (GINA), signed by \u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/the-genetic-inf/\">George W. Bush in 2008\u003c/a> protects Americans against discrimination based on genetic information. The law is far from iron-clad; it doesn’t cover long-term health, life or disability insurance. But there’s also \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/news/health/obamacare/obamacare-guide.jsp\">Obama’s health care law\u003c/a>, coming into effect in 2014, which should moot the point, because even if loopholes currently exist in the GINA law, the president’s healthcare act aims to further limit discrimination based on preexisting conditions. We’ll have to wait to see how well it works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But my willingness to outsource my data goes beyond feeling secure about privacy protections; it’s also about a new way of moving in the world. I’ve never been as protective of my identity as some people, but I now care even less. I sometimes make long personal phone calls on busy city streets, an activity I once found tacky and embarrassing. I’ve gone on internet dates. I post updates and pictures of myself on Facebook, to be perused by friends and “friends” alike. Curating my public persona seems like a lot of trouble, and ultimately pointless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, I’m of the world. And the world is not in a very private mood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But not everyone shares (or can afford to share) this devil-may-care attitude when it comes to his or her genetic information. Some people have good reason to believe that they might be prone to certain illnesses, including incapacitating, contagious and/or fatal ones. Or they may carry mutations that might affect potential offspring. Or maybe they merely chafe at the image of their precious DNA shelved in a vault somewhere, as in the final sequence of \u003cem>Raiders of the Lost Ark.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8172\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/raiders_of_the_lost_ark2-e1378511556309-288x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8172 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/raiders_of_the_lost_ark2-e1378511556309-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"Genetic samples sent by 23andMe customers can be stored indefinitely to be studied by scientists.\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003ca href=\"http://second-reel.blogspot.com/2010/07/homage-reference-and-free-association.html\">Genetic samples sent by 23andMe customers can be stored indefinitely to be studied by scientists. \u003c/a>\u003cbr>(Image: Lucasfilm)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To assuage these fears, 23andMe offers a menu of fates for both your physical sample and your data. On the conservative end, you can choose to have both destroyed after you receive your results. On the other end of the spectrum, you can allow the company to keep your DNA and study it ad infinitum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While 23andMe offers privacy options, the company regularly hints that it would be \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/about/values/\">noble of you to reveal all (in the interest of science)\u003c/a>, and it uses an enticing interface to hustle users for more information. For example, with a feature called “Quick Questions,” you can deliver substantial amounts of self-reported data on the web site before your saliva sample has even arrived at the lab. The more data 23andMe accumulates and can correlate with customers’ self-reported info, the deeper the ocean from which it can fish for new drugs and treatments. Using this “Aggregated Genetic and Self-Reported Information,” the company contributes to \u003ca href=\"https://www.23andme.com/for/scientists/\">papers in peer-reviewed journals\u003c/a>, and in theory could work with third parties to market new drugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It runs a good game, too. You may be made of stronger stuff, but when someone asks me a simple personal question with the promised reward of better self-understanding, I respond like a rat tapping a lever, or a teenager hitting ‘Start’ on a faux-wood-paneled game console.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>How would you describe your current weight?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>When you travel, do you prefer your itinerary to be planned in advance or spontaneous?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Do you cry easily?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>Do you have stretch marks on your hips, thighs, or backs of your arms?\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>When you’re in the mood for a snack, what kind of snack do you usually reach for?\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I waited for my results, I kept coming back to the site to answer questions and explore research on genetically influenced traits such as hair curliness, shyness and the tendency to create systems out of chaos. I found it irresistible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>23andMe also hosts a copious amount of (over)sharing: every trait, ancestry query or medical pitfall has its own group in which customers can discuss it. In hundreds of forums, seekers like me reach out to each other to fill in the gaps of their genetic stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8173\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/23me-2-compressed-e1378836487128.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8173 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/23me-2-compressed-e1378836487128.jpg\" alt=\"23me-2-compressed\" width=\"640\" height=\"421\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">23andMe customers gather in forums to discuss everything from shared genetic mutations to the search for long-lost family. (Arwen Curry/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I realized that once my results were in, I would be able to see — and chat with — people genetically related to me around the world who had also taken the test. At first, I scoffed at this. Don’t people have enough “friends” without having “family,” too? But it was clear this was no fringe activity. These networks were overflowing with posts, comments and discussions, connecting people around the world by their genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as I was beginning to get saturated with other people’s data, an email arrived:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Dear Arwen,\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Your 23andMe results are now available!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>>Log in now to view your results and start personalizing your 23andMe experience.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Ready to swing out over the abyss, I wondered, if I \u003cem>did\u003c/em> have a trait, mutation or disease, would I reach out to this group of online strangers to talk about it? If I learned I had distant cousins, would I want to talk to them, even expand what I thought of as family?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Have you taken the spit test? If you could be part of a community based on your DNA would you join? Add your thoughts to the comments below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In my next post, I will share some of my test results and introduce you to some of the people I met along the way. Stay tuned.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Valley Fever Hospitalizations Increase Dramatically in California",
"title": "Valley Fever Hospitalizations Increase Dramatically in California",
"headTitle": "State of Health | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14958\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/85475461-e1379002502902.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14958\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/85475461-640x431.jpg\" alt=\"Fungal spores that cause valley fever are carried in the dust. Activities including farming in the Central Valley contribute to the spread of the spores. (Robin Beck/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"431\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fungal spores that cause valley fever are carried in the dust. Activities including farming in the Central Valley contribute to the spread of the spores. (Robin Beck/Getty Images) \u003ccite>(Robin Beck/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">(AP) - \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">The annual rate of hospitalizations for valley fever, a potentially lethal but often misdiagnosed disease, has doubled over the past 12 years in California, according to a study published on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">California's rates of reported fever cases increased by more than six-fold over the past decade. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The fever — which is caused by a fungus found in soil and can be contracted by simply breathing in the spores from dust disturbed by wind or other activity — has cost more than $2 billion in hospital charges over about a decade, the study found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">The study, conducted by researchers at the California Department of Public Health, was published in the October 2013 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC's monthly peer-reviewed public health journal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">Valley fever is prevalent in arid regions of the U.S., especially in California and Arizona, as well as in Mexico, Central and South America. It is not spread person-to-person.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">While in most cases the fever results in no symptoms, in about 40 percent of the cases it causes mild to severe flu-like symptoms or more serious infections. In some cases, it can spread to the brain, bones, skin, even eyes, leading to blindness, skin abscesses, lung failure, even death.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">People who show symptoms of the disease can require expensive treatments, prolonged absence from work or school, multiple hospitalizations, and years of monitoring.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">California's rates of reported fever cases increased by more than six-fold over the past decade. Fever cases rose from about 700 in 1998 to more than 5,500 cases reported in 2011, according to the CDC.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cstrong>[Related:\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/05/13/valley-fever-cases-soar-in-west-yet-off-the-radar-of-east-coast-policymakers/\" target=\"_blank\">Valley Fever Cases Soar in West, Yet Off Radar of East Coast Policymakers\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>]\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">A warming climate, drought and changing rainfall patterns are factors that have led to the steep increase invalley fever, researchers say. Improved reporting methods and better diagnosis also partially explain the increase.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">In California, the fever is endemic in the San Joaquin Valley, including Fresno, Kings, Kern, Madera, San Luis Obispo, and Tulare counties.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">From 2000 to 2011, there were 25,217 valley fever-associated hospitalizations in the state; hospitalizations increased from 1,074 in 2000 to 3,197 in 2011.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">A total of 1,220 patients hospitalized for valley fever — 8 percent of the total number hospitalized — died during the initial or subsequent hospitalization.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">About half of the patients initially hospitalized for the fever in California resided in the endemic San Joaquin Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">Those most at risk for hospitalization were men, African Americans and Hispanics, and older people, the study found.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">A third of those initially hospitalized had other health conditions that could increase the fever's severity, including diabetes, HIV or AIDS, and pregnancy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">About 9 percent of the initially hospitalized valley fever patients were admitted from \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/07/03/state-to-transfer-inmates-from-prisons-plagued-by-valley-fever/\" target=\"_blank\">a prison or jail\u003c/a>. Earlier this year, a federal health official ordered the transfer of more than 3,000 exceptionally vulnerable inmates from two San Joaquin Valley prisons where several dozen have died of the disease in recent years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">Researchers say the best way to minimize long-term illnesses and deaths is early diagnosis, close follow-up of patients and appropriate treatment of those at risk for severe disease. Thus, increasing awareness and early recognition of the disease among health care providers and the public is key.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The annual rate of hospitalizations for valley fever, a potentially lethal but often misdiagnosed disease, has doubled over the past 12 years in California, according to a study published on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14958\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/85475461-e1379002502902.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14958\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/85475461-640x431.jpg\" alt=\"Fungal spores that cause valley fever are carried in the dust. Activities including farming in the Central Valley contribute to the spread of the spores. (Robin Beck/Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"431\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fungal spores that cause valley fever are carried in the dust. Activities including farming in the Central Valley contribute to the spread of the spores. (Robin Beck/Getty Images) \u003ccite>(Robin Beck/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">(AP) - \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">The annual rate of hospitalizations for valley fever, a potentially lethal but often misdiagnosed disease, has doubled over the past 12 years in California, according to a study published on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">California's rates of reported fever cases increased by more than six-fold over the past decade. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The fever — which is caused by a fungus found in soil and can be contracted by simply breathing in the spores from dust disturbed by wind or other activity — has cost more than $2 billion in hospital charges over about a decade, the study found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">The study, conducted by researchers at the California Department of Public Health, was published in the October 2013 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC's monthly peer-reviewed public health journal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">Valley fever is prevalent in arid regions of the U.S., especially in California and Arizona, as well as in Mexico, Central and South America. It is not spread person-to-person.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">While in most cases the fever results in no symptoms, in about 40 percent of the cases it causes mild to severe flu-like symptoms or more serious infections. In some cases, it can spread to the brain, bones, skin, even eyes, leading to blindness, skin abscesses, lung failure, even death.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">People who show symptoms of the disease can require expensive treatments, prolonged absence from work or school, multiple hospitalizations, and years of monitoring.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">California's rates of reported fever cases increased by more than six-fold over the past decade. Fever cases rose from about 700 in 1998 to more than 5,500 cases reported in 2011, according to the CDC.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cstrong>[Related:\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/05/13/valley-fever-cases-soar-in-west-yet-off-the-radar-of-east-coast-policymakers/\" target=\"_blank\">Valley Fever Cases Soar in West, Yet Off Radar of East Coast Policymakers\u003c/a>\u003cstrong>]\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">A warming climate, drought and changing rainfall patterns are factors that have led to the steep increase invalley fever, researchers say. Improved reporting methods and better diagnosis also partially explain the increase.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">In California, the fever is endemic in the San Joaquin Valley, including Fresno, Kings, Kern, Madera, San Luis Obispo, and Tulare counties.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">From 2000 to 2011, there were 25,217 valley fever-associated hospitalizations in the state; hospitalizations increased from 1,074 in 2000 to 3,197 in 2011.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">A total of 1,220 patients hospitalized for valley fever — 8 percent of the total number hospitalized — died during the initial or subsequent hospitalization.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">About half of the patients initially hospitalized for the fever in California resided in the endemic San Joaquin Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">Those most at risk for hospitalization were men, African Americans and Hispanics, and older people, the study found.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">A third of those initially hospitalized had other health conditions that could increase the fever's severity, including diabetes, HIV or AIDS, and pregnancy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">About 9 percent of the initially hospitalized valley fever patients were admitted from \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/07/03/state-to-transfer-inmates-from-prisons-plagued-by-valley-fever/\" target=\"_blank\">a prison or jail\u003c/a>. Earlier this year, a federal health official ordered the transfer of more than 3,000 exceptionally vulnerable inmates from two San Joaquin Valley prisons where several dozen have died of the disease in recent years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000\">Researchers say the best way to minimize long-term illnesses and deaths is early diagnosis, close follow-up of patients and appropriate treatment of those at risk for severe disease. Thus, increasing awareness and early recognition of the disease among health care providers and the public is key.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Battery Recycler to Test Soil for Dangerous Metals; Neighbors Skeptical",
"title": "Battery Recycler to Test Soil for Dangerous Metals; Neighbors Skeptical",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14724\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/Exide3.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14724 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/Exide3-640x478.jpg\" alt=\"Regulators say arsenic leaking from the Exide Technologies plant in Vernon endangered as many as 110,000 people living nearby. (Photo/Chris Richards)\" width=\"640\" height=\"478\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Regulators say arsenic leaking from the Exide Technologies plant in Vernon endangered as many as 110,000 people living nearby. Results of tests for lead and other toxins should be available in December. (Photo/Chris Richard)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Chris Richard\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State-ordered testing of soil for lead and other toxins around a battery recycling plant in Vernon, just east of downtown Los Angeles, is underway. The plant, Exide Technologies, already has been accused of endangering the lives of 110,000 people who live nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But neighborhood residents and community leaders say they’re skeptical that the test results will force Exide’s factory to close before it can do any more harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think it’s great that they’re testing, and I’d say that it’s long overdue,” said Monsignor John Moretta of Resurrection Catholic Church in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood about a mile from the plant. He says that members of his congregation have long been worried about emissions from the plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But this is all pretty superficial. It doesn’t get to the real question, which is, at what point do you wait for them to go into more violations before you shut them down?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California \u003ca href=\"http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/LawsRegsPolicies/RCRA.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">regulation\u003c/a> ensures the safe treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous waste, and requires that factories such as battery recyclers satisfy rigorous environmental reviews before obtaining a permit. But Exide has never met that standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Long history of citations\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plant has a long history of air pollution write-ups, including allegations that it allowed lead dust to contaminate the surrounding neighborhood, regulators say. Still, state officials allowed the factory, which melts tens of thousands of batteries a day, to operate on “interim status” for some 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control took action and ordered Exide to suspend operations. Regulators said arsenic emissions from the plant endangered as many as 110,000 who live in Boyle Heights and other nearby neighborhoods. The South Coast Air Quality Management District estimated cancer risk from the airborne arsenic at up to 15 times state standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Toxic Substances Control also found that contaminants had seeped into the ground from corroded pipes at up to 63 times the levels allowed under state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Exide appealed the suspension. In court filings, Exide said it has reduced its arsenic emissions by 70 percent since 2010. Company attorneys argued that regulators were bowing to public outrage and acting arbitrarily. In mid-June, Los Angeles County Judge Luis Lavin ordered the plant reopened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lavin said that keeping the factory closed wouldn’t improve neighborhood health conditions immediately and would cause irreparable harm to the company. He affirmed that ruling two weeks later, pending an administrative law hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That hearing was to resume Tuesday, but DTSC requested a postponement because Exide agreed to address the leaking pipes and airborne emissions identified in the agency’s suspension order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are obligated to articulate, and have discussed with (Exide) ... what actions would have to occur at the facility in order to correct the unacceptable conditions,” agency spokesman Russ Edmondson wrote in an email Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If and when Exide demonstrates that it can satisfy these requirements, DTSC will have achieved its goal in ensuring that the facility operates safely and would consider lifting the suspension.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the faulty pipes are now out of service and Exide has installed a temporary drainage system. A permanent drainage system is in the planning stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighborhood resident Cristal Rivera said she has lost confidence that state regulators will protect her, her husband or their 8-month-old son, Julian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The things they want Exide to do are good, but they don’t seem to have much power,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Factory operated despite damaged system to filter toxic emissions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 7, just five days after Judge Lavin’s ruling to reopen the plant, Exide reported that heat had damaged air filtration devices in one of two “baghouses” that are supposed to scrub out toxic emissions. Even though its air filtration system was compromised, the factory continued to operate, South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesman Sam Atwood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said Exide temporarily shut down portions of the factory that vented to the baghouses but resumed operations the next day, triggering a citation from the Air Quality Management District on July 9. After that, the company closed down operations until the filtration system was repaired, a district report shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district had ordered additional remediation measures and set a deadline of Sept. 1 for Exide to report what new steps it was taking to safeguard the public from its toxic emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in an interview last week, Atwood said no such report had been received.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think their response is going to be, ‘Our plan is what we’ve already done,’ ” Atwood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has installed an automatic door between a storage bin for dismantled batteries and blast furnaces where it melts them, he said. Formerly, the furnaces could freely vent gases into the air through the entrance to the storage bin. Now the automatic gate keeps that passageway closed part of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then the question becomes, ‘Where’s the proof that this has accomplished the risk reduction?’ ” Atwood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exide spokeswoman Susan Jaramillo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivera, the young mother, said she can’t afford to wait. She said she and her husband have decided to sell their house and move to a safer area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There will be gases that stay in that room with the furnace,” she said. “When they open that gate, they’re going to come out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the neighboring community of Bell, City Councilman Nestor Enrique Valencia, a founder of the health activist group Our Salud, said he’s skeptical of government efforts. He admits that’s partly due to his experience of government in his own city, which was shaken by a political corruption scandal in 2010 and 2011. (Valencia was not implicated in the scandal and won his council seat in 2011.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After all that, I’m not going to sit there and listen to a bunch of bureaucrats. I’m just very leery, if not skeptical, of (state agencies’) work,” he said. “I know they’re trying, but I don’t see them being very successful in closing this plant down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valencia said a private lab has tested the blood-lead levels of some 15 people living in the area, and additional testing is scheduled. He has asked local school officials for permission to meet with parents on campus and urge them to have their children tested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Campbell, a spokesman for unionized plant workers, said federally mandated blood tests among employees did not find elevated lead levels. He said he supports additional soil testing and blood testing for the wider community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said dust testing is beginning within 500 feet of the Exide plant, progressing in 1,500-foot concentric circles. Samples are drawn from stormwater curb boxes and open drainage channels, the Los Angeles River channel, sidewalks, and the roofs and grounds of neighboring facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Test results will be available in early December, Edmondson said. If they show contamination, the department will conduct additional testing in a broader area, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, at the Resurrection Catholic School, which is affiliated with Moretta’s parish, principal Angelica Figueroa said faculty members have been encouraging children to participate in public meetings and other political processes that can influence regulators to increase their oversight of companies like Exide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school is about a mile and a half from Exide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These companies would not go to the Westside or Pasadena or any other more affluent area,” she said. “Why? Because people there will step up and voice their concerns. Well, I want our students to know that they have that same right.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "State-ordered testing of the soil for lead and other toxins around a battery recycling plant in Vernon is underway. Exide Technologies has already been accused of endangering the lives of 110,000 people who live nearby.\r\n\r\nBut neighborhood residents and community leaders say they’re skeptical that the test results will force Exide’s factory to close before it can do any more harm.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14724\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/Exide3.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14724 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/Exide3-640x478.jpg\" alt=\"Regulators say arsenic leaking from the Exide Technologies plant in Vernon endangered as many as 110,000 people living nearby. (Photo/Chris Richards)\" width=\"640\" height=\"478\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Regulators say arsenic leaking from the Exide Technologies plant in Vernon endangered as many as 110,000 people living nearby. Results of tests for lead and other toxins should be available in December. (Photo/Chris Richard)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Chris Richard\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State-ordered testing of soil for lead and other toxins around a battery recycling plant in Vernon, just east of downtown Los Angeles, is underway. The plant, Exide Technologies, already has been accused of endangering the lives of 110,000 people who live nearby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But neighborhood residents and community leaders say they’re skeptical that the test results will force Exide’s factory to close before it can do any more harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think it’s great that they’re testing, and I’d say that it’s long overdue,” said Monsignor John Moretta of Resurrection Catholic Church in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood about a mile from the plant. He says that members of his congregation have long been worried about emissions from the plant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“But this is all pretty superficial. It doesn’t get to the real question, which is, at what point do you wait for them to go into more violations before you shut them down?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California \u003ca href=\"http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/LawsRegsPolicies/RCRA.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">regulation\u003c/a> ensures the safe treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous waste, and requires that factories such as battery recyclers satisfy rigorous environmental reviews before obtaining a permit. But Exide has never met that standard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Long history of citations\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plant has a long history of air pollution write-ups, including allegations that it allowed lead dust to contaminate the surrounding neighborhood, regulators say. Still, state officials allowed the factory, which melts tens of thousands of batteries a day, to operate on “interim status” for some 30 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control took action and ordered Exide to suspend operations. Regulators said arsenic emissions from the plant endangered as many as 110,000 who live in Boyle Heights and other nearby neighborhoods. The South Coast Air Quality Management District estimated cancer risk from the airborne arsenic at up to 15 times state standards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Department of Toxic Substances Control also found that contaminants had seeped into the ground from corroded pipes at up to 63 times the levels allowed under state law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Exide appealed the suspension. In court filings, Exide said it has reduced its arsenic emissions by 70 percent since 2010. Company attorneys argued that regulators were bowing to public outrage and acting arbitrarily. In mid-June, Los Angeles County Judge Luis Lavin ordered the plant reopened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lavin said that keeping the factory closed wouldn’t improve neighborhood health conditions immediately and would cause irreparable harm to the company. He affirmed that ruling two weeks later, pending an administrative law hearing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That hearing was to resume Tuesday, but DTSC requested a postponement because Exide agreed to address the leaking pipes and airborne emissions identified in the agency’s suspension order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are obligated to articulate, and have discussed with (Exide) ... what actions would have to occur at the facility in order to correct the unacceptable conditions,” agency spokesman Russ Edmondson wrote in an email Tuesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If and when Exide demonstrates that it can satisfy these requirements, DTSC will have achieved its goal in ensuring that the facility operates safely and would consider lifting the suspension.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said the faulty pipes are now out of service and Exide has installed a temporary drainage system. A permanent drainage system is in the planning stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Neighborhood resident Cristal Rivera said she has lost confidence that state regulators will protect her, her husband or their 8-month-old son, Julian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The things they want Exide to do are good, but they don’t seem to have much power,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Factory operated despite damaged system to filter toxic emissions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On July 7, just five days after Judge Lavin’s ruling to reopen the plant, Exide reported that heat had damaged air filtration devices in one of two “baghouses” that are supposed to scrub out toxic emissions. Even though its air filtration system was compromised, the factory continued to operate, South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesman Sam Atwood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He said Exide temporarily shut down portions of the factory that vented to the baghouses but resumed operations the next day, triggering a citation from the Air Quality Management District on July 9. After that, the company closed down operations until the filtration system was repaired, a district report shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The district had ordered additional remediation measures and set a deadline of Sept. 1 for Exide to report what new steps it was taking to safeguard the public from its toxic emissions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in an interview last week, Atwood said no such report had been received.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think their response is going to be, ‘Our plan is what we’ve already done,’ ” Atwood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company has installed an automatic door between a storage bin for dismantled batteries and blast furnaces where it melts them, he said. Formerly, the furnaces could freely vent gases into the air through the entrance to the storage bin. Now the automatic gate keeps that passageway closed part of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then the question becomes, ‘Where’s the proof that this has accomplished the risk reduction?’ ” Atwood said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Exide spokeswoman Susan Jaramillo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rivera, the young mother, said she can’t afford to wait. She said she and her husband have decided to sell their house and move to a safer area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There will be gases that stay in that room with the furnace,” she said. “When they open that gate, they’re going to come out.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the neighboring community of Bell, City Councilman Nestor Enrique Valencia, a founder of the health activist group Our Salud, said he’s skeptical of government efforts. He admits that’s partly due to his experience of government in his own city, which was shaken by a political corruption scandal in 2010 and 2011. (Valencia was not implicated in the scandal and won his council seat in 2011.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After all that, I’m not going to sit there and listen to a bunch of bureaucrats. I’m just very leery, if not skeptical, of (state agencies’) work,” he said. “I know they’re trying, but I don’t see them being very successful in closing this plant down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valencia said a private lab has tested the blood-lead levels of some 15 people living in the area, and additional testing is scheduled. He has asked local school officials for permission to meet with parents on campus and urge them to have their children tested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>David Campbell, a spokesman for unionized plant workers, said federally mandated blood tests among employees did not find elevated lead levels. He said he supports additional soil testing and blood testing for the wider community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Edmondson said dust testing is beginning within 500 feet of the Exide plant, progressing in 1,500-foot concentric circles. Samples are drawn from stormwater curb boxes and open drainage channels, the Los Angeles River channel, sidewalks, and the roofs and grounds of neighboring facilities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Test results will be available in early December, Edmondson said. If they show contamination, the department will conduct additional testing in a broader area, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, at the Resurrection Catholic School, which is affiliated with Moretta’s parish, principal Angelica Figueroa said faculty members have been encouraging children to participate in public meetings and other political processes that can influence regulators to increase their oversight of companies like Exide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The school is about a mile and a half from Exide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These companies would not go to the Westside or Pasadena or any other more affluent area,” she said. “Why? Because people there will step up and voice their concerns. Well, I want our students to know that they have that same right.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Real Vaccine Roulette: Missing Your Baby’s Scheduled Shots",
"headTitle": "The Real Vaccine Roulette: Missing Your Baby’s Scheduled Shots | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8282\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/newborn-288x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/newborn-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"Babies receive their first whooping cough vaccination at two months. Newborns and infants too young to be vaccinated face the greatest risk of serious complications or death from this highly contagious disease. (Photo: Pospiech via Wikipedia)\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8282\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Babies receive their first whooping cough vaccination at two months. Newborns and infants too young to be vaccinated face the greatest risk of serious complications or death from this highly contagious disease. (Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newborn_baby-1_hour_after.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pospiech via Wikipedia\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Children who miss one or more of their scheduled whooping cough shots face a much greater risk of catching the potentially deadly disease, a new study shows. Risk jumps substantially with each delayed or skipped shot: children denied all recommended shots are 30 times more likely to get sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results, \u003ca href=\"http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558057\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published online Monday in JAMA\u003c/a>, reflect a growing tendency among parents to delay or refuse certain childhood vaccinations. More than \u003ca href=\"http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558057\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">10 percent of parents\u003c/a> now “under-vaccinate” their kids, citing concerns about vaccine safety. Despite ongoing education campaigns to dispel misguided fears about vaccines, some parents still worry that t\u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/1/124.full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">oo many vaccines “overwhelm”\u003c/a> a young child’s immune system while others believe that s\u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/4/654.full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pecific vaccines can cause autism\u003c/a> in healthy children. Neither is true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whooping cough (also known as pertussis) causes violent, spasmodic coughing fits that produce the disease’s trademark “whoop” as victims desperately struggle to breathe. Babies too young to vaccinate are at greatest risk of serious complications, as the infection quickly overwhelms their immature bodies. Last week, two newborns \u003ca href=\"http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-09-05/lifestyle/sns-rt-us-usa-health-texas-20130905_1_mild-cough-pertussis-severe-coughing\">died in Texas\u003c/a> during one of the biggest whooping cough epidemics there in 50 years. Pertussis can also cause seizures, brain damage and mental retardation as infection robs tissues of oxygen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the 2010 California epidemic—the largest in 60 years—more than 9,000 people contracted pertussis, and ten infants died. Of 159 pertussis deaths reported to the CDC between 2004 and 2011, nearly half were babies under three months old. To protect babies too young to get vaccinated, health officials \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/features/pertussis/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">urge pregnant women \u003c/a>to get a booster shot during the third trimester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veering from a Science-Based Schedule \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/about.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices\u003c/a> sets the childhood immunization schedule based on evidence-based approaches to reduce vaccine-preventable diseases. The ACIP recommends that children receive five doses of the DTaP shot—a diphtheria, tetanus and aceullar pertussis combination vaccine—between the ages of two months and six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents worried about vaccine safety have increasingly adopted alternatives to these well-studied schedules, choosing to delay, space out or forgo shots altogether. \u003ca href=\"http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558058\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">None of these options \u003c/a>has been studied to understand just how they affect disease risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Toward that end, epidemiologist Jason Glanz and a team of health experts from across the country evaluated the consequences of delaying or refusing a child’s DTaP vaccination amid ongoing pertussis outbreaks. The team reviewed the medical records of children born between 2004 and 2008 at eight managed care organizations from coast to coast, including Kaiser Permanente Northern and Southern California. They identified confirmed cases of pertussis, then determined whether children were under- or fully vaccinated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As expected, the more DTaP shots missed, the higher the risk. Missing or delaying three doses made a child 19 times more likely to get pertussis. Under-vaccinating for all four scheduled shots made a child \u003cem>30 times more likely\u003c/em> to get pertussis. More than a third of pertussis cases in kids ages three months to three years old could have been prevented if they’d received their shots on time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not surprising that deviating from the recommended schedule places children at much greater risk of getting a serious infection, says Glanz, an investigator with the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado. “The problem is that there are a lot of parents who think it’s okay to push [the vaccinations] off. They need to know that pushing them off places their children at risk, especially at a time when the disease is particularly serious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Theories without Evidence\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nGlanz and his colleagues didn’t interview parents for this study, so it’s not clear why they chose not to vaccinate their children against a disease that kills mostly babies. In \u003ca href=\"2205/S1876285913001563/1-s2.0-S1876285913001563-main.pdf?_tid=ce1164fa-1747-11e3-86a2-00000aab0f6c&acdnat=1378508472_27a83f2529a49f75e227540ca9c366e3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">another study,\u003c/a> Glanz found that although parents typically trust their pediatricians for most medical advice, they think doctors don’t provide “balanced” information about vaccination risks and benefits. For information on risk, parents rely on other parents, web sites, advocacy groups, \u003ca href=\"http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/1876-2859/PIIS1876285913001599.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">celebrities,\u003c/a> and books that advocate alternate schedules and raise unfounded fears about vaccine dangers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fears about the pertussis vaccine surfaced in the early 80s, after the TV documentary “Vaccine Roulette” blamed the vaccine for leaving children dead or brain-damaged. The original vaccine contained the whole (killed) pathogen and so delivered hundreds of antigens to trigger an immune response. More antigens meant broader protection against numerous strains of the pathogen, but also produced more side effects, including febrile seizures, irritability, and a short-lived though frightening condition (called hypotonic hyporesponsive syndrome) that makes children limp and unresponsive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studies found no support for long-term brain damage or other terrible dangers raised by “Vaccine Roulette,” but many parents, understandably scared by what they saw, stopped vaccinating their children. Pertussis has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt10-pertussis.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on the rise ever since\u003c/a>, but not simply because parents shun vaccination. Public health officials attribute part of the increase to better recognition of the symptoms, now that the disease is common again, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/05/29/whooping-cough-remains-a-formidable-opponent-against-vaccinatio/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">along with waning immunity \u003c/a>and the evolution of more aggressive pathogens. To alleviate fears about the whole-cell vaccine, manufacturers created the current acellular version (DTaP) with just three antigens. Though DTaP is extremely effective in infants and young children, as Glanz’s study makes clear, it can’t target all circulating pathogen strains and wears off over time, which is why public health officials recommend booster shots for kids entering seventh grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The JAMA study paints a disturbing picture that many parents believe vaccines are more dangerous than an infectious disease that \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">once killed 9,000 people a year\u003c/a>. But it also shows that the childhood DTaP vaccine works. “Whatever concerns we have about the vaccine’s effectiveness, this study shows it prevents a lot of cases of serious infection without hurting kids,” says Roger Baxter, co-director of Kaiser Permanente’s Vaccine Study Center in Oakland. Baxter wasn’t involved in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the childhood immunization schedule protects against more pathogens than ever before—thanks to discoveries that led to new vaccines—shots today elicit an immune response with just a fraction of the antigens present in older vaccines. That’s what vaccines are all about, says Baxter: protecting children against a disease by inducing an immune response without producing the illness. “It’s just sad that some people are afraid of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glanz wants parents to know that public health experts are on their side. “We know parents want to do what’s best for their child, and that’s our objective too,” he says. “Public health experts do studies like this not because we’re pro-vaccine but because we’re pro-child. We know these decisions can be difficult and there’s a lot of confusing information out there. We want to help parents make the best decisions for their child.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Some parents are choosing to delay, space out or forgo their children's recommended vaccinations. But according to a new study, every shot parents choose to skip greatly increases their children's risk of getting a potentially fatal infectious disease.",
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"description": "Some parents are choosing to delay, space out or forgo their children's recommended vaccinations. But according to a new study, every shot parents choose to skip greatly increases their children's risk of getting a potentially fatal infectious disease.",
"title": "The Real Vaccine Roulette: Missing Your Baby’s Scheduled Shots | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8282\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/newborn-288x162.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/newborn-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"Babies receive their first whooping cough vaccination at two months. Newborns and infants too young to be vaccinated face the greatest risk of serious complications or death from this highly contagious disease. (Photo: Pospiech via Wikipedia)\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8282\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Babies receive their first whooping cough vaccination at two months. Newborns and infants too young to be vaccinated face the greatest risk of serious complications or death from this highly contagious disease. (Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Newborn_baby-1_hour_after.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pospiech via Wikipedia\u003c/a>)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Children who miss one or more of their scheduled whooping cough shots face a much greater risk of catching the potentially deadly disease, a new study shows. Risk jumps substantially with each delayed or skipped shot: children denied all recommended shots are 30 times more likely to get sick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results, \u003ca href=\"http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558057\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published online Monday in JAMA\u003c/a>, reflect a growing tendency among parents to delay or refuse certain childhood vaccinations. More than \u003ca href=\"http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558057\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">10 percent of parents\u003c/a> now “under-vaccinate” their kids, citing concerns about vaccine safety. Despite ongoing education campaigns to dispel misguided fears about vaccines, some parents still worry that t\u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/1/124.full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">oo many vaccines “overwhelm”\u003c/a> a young child’s immune system while others believe that s\u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/4/654.full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pecific vaccines can cause autism\u003c/a> in healthy children. Neither is true.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whooping cough (also known as pertussis) causes violent, spasmodic coughing fits that produce the disease’s trademark “whoop” as victims desperately struggle to breathe. Babies too young to vaccinate are at greatest risk of serious complications, as the infection quickly overwhelms their immature bodies. Last week, two newborns \u003ca href=\"http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-09-05/lifestyle/sns-rt-us-usa-health-texas-20130905_1_mild-cough-pertussis-severe-coughing\">died in Texas\u003c/a> during one of the biggest whooping cough epidemics there in 50 years. Pertussis can also cause seizures, brain damage and mental retardation as infection robs tissues of oxygen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the 2010 California epidemic—the largest in 60 years—more than 9,000 people contracted pertussis, and ten infants died. Of 159 pertussis deaths reported to the CDC between 2004 and 2011, nearly half were babies under three months old. To protect babies too young to get vaccinated, health officials \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/features/pertussis/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">urge pregnant women \u003c/a>to get a booster shot during the third trimester.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Veering from a Science-Based Schedule \u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThe \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/about.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices\u003c/a> sets the childhood immunization schedule based on evidence-based approaches to reduce vaccine-preventable diseases. The ACIP recommends that children receive five doses of the DTaP shot—a diphtheria, tetanus and aceullar pertussis combination vaccine—between the ages of two months and six years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Parents worried about vaccine safety have increasingly adopted alternatives to these well-studied schedules, choosing to delay, space out or forgo shots altogether. \u003ca href=\"http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558058\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">None of these options \u003c/a>has been studied to understand just how they affect disease risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Toward that end, epidemiologist Jason Glanz and a team of health experts from across the country evaluated the consequences of delaying or refusing a child’s DTaP vaccination amid ongoing pertussis outbreaks. The team reviewed the medical records of children born between 2004 and 2008 at eight managed care organizations from coast to coast, including Kaiser Permanente Northern and Southern California. They identified confirmed cases of pertussis, then determined whether children were under- or fully vaccinated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As expected, the more DTaP shots missed, the higher the risk. Missing or delaying three doses made a child 19 times more likely to get pertussis. Under-vaccinating for all four scheduled shots made a child \u003cem>30 times more likely\u003c/em> to get pertussis. More than a third of pertussis cases in kids ages three months to three years old could have been prevented if they’d received their shots on time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not surprising that deviating from the recommended schedule places children at much greater risk of getting a serious infection, says Glanz, an investigator with the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado. “The problem is that there are a lot of parents who think it’s okay to push [the vaccinations] off. They need to know that pushing them off places their children at risk, especially at a time when the disease is particularly serious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Theories without Evidence\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nGlanz and his colleagues didn’t interview parents for this study, so it’s not clear why they chose not to vaccinate their children against a disease that kills mostly babies. In \u003ca href=\"2205/S1876285913001563/1-s2.0-S1876285913001563-main.pdf?_tid=ce1164fa-1747-11e3-86a2-00000aab0f6c&acdnat=1378508472_27a83f2529a49f75e227540ca9c366e3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">another study,\u003c/a> Glanz found that although parents typically trust their pediatricians for most medical advice, they think doctors don’t provide “balanced” information about vaccination risks and benefits. For information on risk, parents rely on other parents, web sites, advocacy groups, \u003ca href=\"http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/1876-2859/PIIS1876285913001599.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">celebrities,\u003c/a> and books that advocate alternate schedules and raise unfounded fears about vaccine dangers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fears about the pertussis vaccine surfaced in the early 80s, after the TV documentary “Vaccine Roulette” blamed the vaccine for leaving children dead or brain-damaged. The original vaccine contained the whole (killed) pathogen and so delivered hundreds of antigens to trigger an immune response. More antigens meant broader protection against numerous strains of the pathogen, but also produced more side effects, including febrile seizures, irritability, and a short-lived though frightening condition (called hypotonic hyporesponsive syndrome) that makes children limp and unresponsive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studies found no support for long-term brain damage or other terrible dangers raised by “Vaccine Roulette,” but many parents, understandably scared by what they saw, stopped vaccinating their children. Pertussis has been \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/surv-manual/chpt10-pertussis.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">on the rise ever since\u003c/a>, but not simply because parents shun vaccination. Public health officials attribute part of the increase to better recognition of the symptoms, now that the disease is common again, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2013/05/29/whooping-cough-remains-a-formidable-opponent-against-vaccinatio/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">along with waning immunity \u003c/a>and the evolution of more aggressive pathogens. To alleviate fears about the whole-cell vaccine, manufacturers created the current acellular version (DTaP) with just three antigens. Though DTaP is extremely effective in infants and young children, as Glanz’s study makes clear, it can’t target all circulating pathogen strains and wears off over time, which is why public health officials recommend booster shots for kids entering seventh grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The JAMA study paints a disturbing picture that many parents believe vaccines are more dangerous than an infectious disease that \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">once killed 9,000 people a year\u003c/a>. But it also shows that the childhood DTaP vaccine works. “Whatever concerns we have about the vaccine’s effectiveness, this study shows it prevents a lot of cases of serious infection without hurting kids,” says Roger Baxter, co-director of Kaiser Permanente’s Vaccine Study Center in Oakland. Baxter wasn’t involved in the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the childhood immunization schedule protects against more pathogens than ever before—thanks to discoveries that led to new vaccines—shots today elicit an immune response with just a fraction of the antigens present in older vaccines. That’s what vaccines are all about, says Baxter: protecting children against a disease by inducing an immune response without producing the illness. “It’s just sad that some people are afraid of it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glanz wants parents to know that public health experts are on their side. “We know parents want to do what’s best for their child, and that’s our objective too,” he says. “Public health experts do studies like this not because we’re pro-vaccine but because we’re pro-child. We know these decisions can be difficult and there’s a lot of confusing information out there. We want to help parents make the best decisions for their child.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Foster Kids, Children in Orphanages at Higher Risk for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome",
"title": "Foster Kids, Children in Orphanages at Higher Risk for Fetal Alcohol Syndrome",
"headTitle": "State of Health | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14863\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/126221153-e1378752078714.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14863\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/126221153-640x480.jpg\" alt=\"Experts say no amount of alcohol is known to be safe during pregnancy. (Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Experts say no amount of alcohol is known to be safe during pregnancy. (Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Angela Hart\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children who grow up in foster care or are adopted from orphanages are more at risk for fetal alcohol syndrome because there is a higher probability that their mothers consumed alcohol during pregnancy. An \u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/09/04/peds.2013-0066.abstract\" target=\"_blank\">international study\u003c/a> published Monday strongly recommends that infants and adolescents in these child welfare settings be tested for the disorder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It is imperative that screening be implemented in these at-risk populations,\" reported the authors of the study, \"Prevalence of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders in Child Care Setting.\" The researchers conducted a meta-analysis, where they pooled data from past studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fetal alcohol syndrome can cause a \u003ca href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fetal-alcohol-syndrome/DS00184\" target=\"_blank\">cascade of problems\u003c/a>, including physical deformities, developmental delay, learning disorders and behavior problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Svetlana Popova of the University of Toronto said she and three other researchers collected international data from peer-reviewed journals, government reports and books. They found that 6 percent of children who live in foster homes or similar care settings have fetal alcohol syndrome. This rate is approximately nine to 60 times higher than that in the general population internationally and up to 30 times higher than the prevalence of the disorder in the general population in the U.S., which is between 0.2 and 0.7 percent, Popova said in an interview.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our research team has been studying the disorder for years,\" Popova said. \"We hope the results of this study will attract attention to the needs of children in care affected by prenatal alcohol exposure.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though fetal alcohol syndrome is preventable, it is difficult to diagnose because health care providers must understand how often and how much alcohol the mother drank during pregnancy, and at which stages, according to experts who study the disorder. Even more challenging is that alcohol affects children differently — problems range from facial deformities to brain damage that can manifest itself in cognitive impairments, difficulty learning, and inability to cope in social settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tom Donaldson, president of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, said screening for the disorder would have huge benefits both to the person who has it and to society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Screening would be very important in many systems of care because when you screen, you can then diagnose, and then you can develop a care plan and get somebody on a path of reaching their full potential,\" Donaldson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he cautioned that information needed to identify the disorder is often hard to come by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You need the alcohol usage history from the mother,\" he said. And when so many affected children \"are in foster care or adoptive care — they're not with their biological parents — that can sometimes can be hard to obtain,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday was also International Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Awareness Day, established in 1999 in an attempt to draw international attention to the importance of abstaining from drinking alcohol during pregnancy, said experts in the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The awareness day \"is an important reminder that prenatal alcohol exposure is the leading preventable cause of birth defects and developmental disorders in the United States,\" said the National Institutes of Health in \u003ca href=\"http://www.nih.gov/news/health/sep2013/niaaa-06.htm\" target=\"_blank\">a release\u003c/a>. \"Almost 40 years have passed since we recognized that drinking during pregnancy can result in a wide range of disabilities for children, of which Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the most severe.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Mattson, an expert in fetal alcohol syndrome at San Diego State University, said the disorder has remained a severe public health problem since its initial identification in 1973.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Mixed messages in the media and a general lack of information about the disorder in the general population are at least part of the reason that it is so prevalent,\" Mattson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates say the leading recommendation of the study in the journal \"Pediatrics\" — early detection, especially in foster care settings -- can lead to wider public awareness and improved health for those affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Screening can lead to better coordination between agencies, for example, between schools, between health care agencies and in the actual foster homes,\" said Mike Odeh, of Children Now, an advocacy group. \"We know by definition, children in the welfare system are by definition more vulnerable, so it's no surprise that there is higher prevalence of the disorder in those areas. We need to focus on early identification, but also look at how our systems are set up to coordinate their care.\"\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Children who grow up in foster care or are adopted from orphanages are more at risk for fetal alcohol syndrome because there is a higher probability that their mothers consumed alcohol during pregnancy. An international study published Monday strongly recommends that infants and adolescents in these child welfare settings be tested for the disorder.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14863\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/126221153-e1378752078714.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14863\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/09/126221153-640x480.jpg\" alt=\"Experts say no amount of alcohol is known to be safe during pregnancy. (Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Experts say no amount of alcohol is known to be safe during pregnancy. (Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Angela Hart\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children who grow up in foster care or are adopted from orphanages are more at risk for fetal alcohol syndrome because there is a higher probability that their mothers consumed alcohol during pregnancy. An \u003ca href=\"http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/09/04/peds.2013-0066.abstract\" target=\"_blank\">international study\u003c/a> published Monday strongly recommends that infants and adolescents in these child welfare settings be tested for the disorder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It is imperative that screening be implemented in these at-risk populations,\" reported the authors of the study, \"Prevalence of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders in Child Care Setting.\" The researchers conducted a meta-analysis, where they pooled data from past studies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fetal alcohol syndrome can cause a \u003ca href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fetal-alcohol-syndrome/DS00184\" target=\"_blank\">cascade of problems\u003c/a>, including physical deformities, developmental delay, learning disorders and behavior problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Svetlana Popova of the University of Toronto said she and three other researchers collected international data from peer-reviewed journals, government reports and books. They found that 6 percent of children who live in foster homes or similar care settings have fetal alcohol syndrome. This rate is approximately nine to 60 times higher than that in the general population internationally and up to 30 times higher than the prevalence of the disorder in the general population in the U.S., which is between 0.2 and 0.7 percent, Popova said in an interview.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Our research team has been studying the disorder for years,\" Popova said. \"We hope the results of this study will attract attention to the needs of children in care affected by prenatal alcohol exposure.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though fetal alcohol syndrome is preventable, it is difficult to diagnose because health care providers must understand how often and how much alcohol the mother drank during pregnancy, and at which stages, according to experts who study the disorder. Even more challenging is that alcohol affects children differently — problems range from facial deformities to brain damage that can manifest itself in cognitive impairments, difficulty learning, and inability to cope in social settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tom Donaldson, president of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, said screening for the disorder would have huge benefits both to the person who has it and to society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Screening would be very important in many systems of care because when you screen, you can then diagnose, and then you can develop a care plan and get somebody on a path of reaching their full potential,\" Donaldson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he cautioned that information needed to identify the disorder is often hard to come by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"You need the alcohol usage history from the mother,\" he said. And when so many affected children \"are in foster care or adoptive care — they're not with their biological parents — that can sometimes can be hard to obtain,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monday was also International Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Awareness Day, established in 1999 in an attempt to draw international attention to the importance of abstaining from drinking alcohol during pregnancy, said experts in the field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The awareness day \"is an important reminder that prenatal alcohol exposure is the leading preventable cause of birth defects and developmental disorders in the United States,\" said the National Institutes of Health in \u003ca href=\"http://www.nih.gov/news/health/sep2013/niaaa-06.htm\" target=\"_blank\">a release\u003c/a>. \"Almost 40 years have passed since we recognized that drinking during pregnancy can result in a wide range of disabilities for children, of which Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is the most severe.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Mattson, an expert in fetal alcohol syndrome at San Diego State University, said the disorder has remained a severe public health problem since its initial identification in 1973.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Mixed messages in the media and a general lack of information about the disorder in the general population are at least part of the reason that it is so prevalent,\" Mattson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Advocates say the leading recommendation of the study in the journal \"Pediatrics\" — early detection, especially in foster care settings -- can lead to wider public awareness and improved health for those affected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Screening can lead to better coordination between agencies, for example, between schools, between health care agencies and in the actual foster homes,\" said Mike Odeh, of Children Now, an advocacy group. \"We know by definition, children in the welfare system are by definition more vulnerable, so it's no surprise that there is higher prevalence of the disorder in those areas. We need to focus on early identification, but also look at how our systems are set up to coordinate their care.\"\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Molecular Scissors May Help Potentially Cure AIDS in the Future",
"headTitle": "Molecular Scissors May Help Potentially Cure AIDS in the Future | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8111\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 637px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/AIDSquilt.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8111\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8111\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/AIDSquilt.jpg\" alt=\"We will know in a few years if a new treatment will end up being a cure for AIDS. This image of the AIDS quilt is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.\" width=\"637\" height=\"351\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">We will know in a few years if a new treatment will end up being a cure for AIDS. This image of the AIDS quilt is courtesy of \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AIDS_Quilt_at_2012_International_AIDS_Conference.JPG\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ever since AIDS emerged as a deadly disease in the early 1980’s, scientists have been looking for a cure. And now, using a very precise set of DNA scissors, they may finally be taking baby steps towards one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new hope rests on the old observation that a few people are highly resistant or even immune to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. These people can live a high-risk lifestyle that results in multiple exposures to the virus and still never end up with the disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When scientists looked at these people’s DNA, they found that many of them shared a specific genetic mutation called \u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask336\">CCR5 delta32\u003c/a>. This mutation inactivates the CCR5 gene which means these people make no CCR5 protein. This lack of CCR5 protein makes these folks highly resistant to getting AIDS because the most virulent form of the virus, HIV-1, needs it to get into blood cells. No infection means no AIDS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While this is interesting and obviously a boon to the small minority of people with this mutation, it doesn’t seem like it would be very useful for people already infected with HIV. And yet it has turned out to be incredibly useful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning about this mutation pointed scientists towards a new class of drugs, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5_receptor_antagonist\">CCR5 receptor antagonists\u003c/a>. These drugs block the action of the CCR5 protein making it very difficult for HIV-1 to enter the patient’s blood cells. At least one of these, Selzentry, is currently being used to treat some cases of HIV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this isn’t even the most exciting use of this discovery. Scientists in Germany actually used this knowledge to \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2008/11/24/curing-aids-with-a-bone-marrow-transplant/\">cure a man of his AIDS\u003c/a>!\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8127\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/ccr5.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8127\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/ccr5.jpg\" alt=\"The molecule in yellow, CCR5, may be the key to an eventual cure for AIDS. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.\" width=\"250\" height=\"248\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8127\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The molecule in yellow, CCR5, may be the key to an eventual cure for AIDS. Image courtesy of \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CCR5_receptor%2Bmembrane.png\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back in 2007, an AIDS patient in Berlin Germany was told he would need a bone marrow transplant to treat his newly diagnosed leukemia. He and his doctor decided to seek out a donor who had the CCR5 delta 32 mutation. The hope was that this bone marrow transplant would treat both of his diseases at once. Their hope was realized: his leukemia went into remission and his viral load became undetectable. This bone marrow transplant cured his AIDS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bone marrow transplants replace a patient’s blood stem cells with the donor’s. What this means in this case is that the AIDS patient now had the donor’s blood cells coursing through his veins and these new blood cells lacked the CCR5 protein. Any HIV-1 he had in his system now had no way of making copies of itself which is why his viral load fell to the undetectable levels where they remain to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, scientists can’t do this for everyone with AIDS. Not only is the CCR5 delta 32 mutation rare enough that it would be impossible to find donor matches for all or even most AIDS patient, but bone marrow transplants are also dangerous, expensive treatments with a high mortality rate. No, we need a different way to use this mutation to help cure other AIDS patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way would be to engineer the mutation into a patient’s blood cells. Now we could avoid having to find a donor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is just what the folks at Sangamo Biosciences are trying to do. With the help of a \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/a-unique-hiv-case-inspires-new-research/\">team of academic collaborators\u003c/a> and money from \u003ca href=\"http://www.cirm.ca.gov/\">California Stem Cell Bond\u003c/a>, they have come up with a product called \u003ca href=\"http://www.sangamo.com/pipeline/sb-728.html\">SB-728\u003c/a> that can specifically inactivate the CCR5 gene in human cells. This treatment has even made it into clinical trials where so far the results appear to be encouraging (although \u003ca href=\"http://bir-llc.com/sb-728-t/\">not everyone agrees\u003c/a>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this approach works, it would be a game changer for AIDS. The disease would go from being manageable to being functionally cured. And that isn’t all. There are other diseases that could be treated similarly. Success here could translate to a whole new way to get at other intractable diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is all very exciting, but I want to caution against getting our hopes up just yet. This specific treatment could still fail in ongoing clinical trials or even turn out to not be a permanent cure. But still, because of the Berlin patient, we know that if we can inactivate the CCR5 gene in a patient’s blood cells, we can cure his or her AIDS. So even if this approach fails, there may be other ways to kill this gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molecular Scissor Science\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8130\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/MolecularScissors.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8130\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/MolecularScissors.jpg\" alt=\"Image courtesy of Dr. Stacey Wirt, Stanford University.\" width=\"250\" height=\"253\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8130\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image courtesy of Dr. Stacey Wirt, Stanford University.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The science behind this approach is very cool. The basic idea is to create a pair of molecular scissors that will cut human DNA only at the CCR5 gene. Once cut, our cells will wreck the gene in the process of repairing the DNA. Remember, a broken CCR5 gene means no CCR5 protein which means no HIV-1 infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scissors part is easy. There are lots of enzymes whose job it is to cut DNA. The most famous are the restriction endonucleases from bacteria that serve as a part of their primitive immune system (they chop up invading viruses). In fact, molecular biology is built on these enzymes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time scientists at Sangamo started working on this approach, there were no natural enzymes specific enough for their purposes. The enzymes known at this time would cut human DNA at thousands of different places which would obviously be catastrophic. The patient would not survive such treatment.\u003cbr>\nSo the scientists needed to come up with a way to make these scissors only cut at the spot they wanted. There are a number of ways to do this but the scientists at Sangamo focused on natural DNA binders called zinc finger proteins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first step was to figure out how these zinc finger proteins recognize specific DNA sequences. With a lot of work, they came to understand this well enough that they could now create zinc fingers that recognize any three bases they were interested in. So they could whip up one that recognized ATG and another that could recognize CCC and so on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three base pairs isn’t enough and in fact, is worse than any of the naturally available enzymes. To get at the 18-24 base pair recognition they needed, they decided to string together multiple zinc fingers. Now they had the specificity they needed. (I have simplified this mightily but it is the basic idea…click \u003ca href=\"http://www.zincfingers.org/default2.htm\">here \u003c/a>if you want to go deeper.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the scientists whipped up a protein that could specifically recognize the CCR5 gene and attached the unfortunately named Fok1 as its scissors. This protein cuts the CCR5 gene in cells in the lab and in clinical trials. So far so good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We need to wait to see what happens, but these trials are definitely something we need to keep our eyes on. They may not only lead to a functional cure for AIDS, but they could also open up a whole new way to treat diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDkUFzZoQAs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A very nice explanation of zinc finger nucleases and a second type of scissors, TALENs.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8111\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 637px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/AIDSquilt.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8111\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8111\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/AIDSquilt.jpg\" alt=\"We will know in a few years if a new treatment will end up being a cure for AIDS. This image of the AIDS quilt is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.\" width=\"637\" height=\"351\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">We will know in a few years if a new treatment will end up being a cure for AIDS. This image of the AIDS quilt is courtesy of \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AIDS_Quilt_at_2012_International_AIDS_Conference.JPG\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ever since AIDS emerged as a deadly disease in the early 1980’s, scientists have been looking for a cure. And now, using a very precise set of DNA scissors, they may finally be taking baby steps towards one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new hope rests on the old observation that a few people are highly resistant or even immune to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. These people can live a high-risk lifestyle that results in multiple exposures to the virus and still never end up with the disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When scientists looked at these people’s DNA, they found that many of them shared a specific genetic mutation called \u003ca href=\"http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask336\">CCR5 delta32\u003c/a>. This mutation inactivates the CCR5 gene which means these people make no CCR5 protein. This lack of CCR5 protein makes these folks highly resistant to getting AIDS because the most virulent form of the virus, HIV-1, needs it to get into blood cells. No infection means no AIDS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While this is interesting and obviously a boon to the small minority of people with this mutation, it doesn’t seem like it would be very useful for people already infected with HIV. And yet it has turned out to be incredibly useful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Learning about this mutation pointed scientists towards a new class of drugs, \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5_receptor_antagonist\">CCR5 receptor antagonists\u003c/a>. These drugs block the action of the CCR5 protein making it very difficult for HIV-1 to enter the patient’s blood cells. At least one of these, Selzentry, is currently being used to treat some cases of HIV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And this isn’t even the most exciting use of this discovery. Scientists in Germany actually used this knowledge to \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2008/11/24/curing-aids-with-a-bone-marrow-transplant/\">cure a man of his AIDS\u003c/a>!\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8127\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/ccr5.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8127\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/ccr5.jpg\" alt=\"The molecule in yellow, CCR5, may be the key to an eventual cure for AIDS. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.\" width=\"250\" height=\"248\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8127\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The molecule in yellow, CCR5, may be the key to an eventual cure for AIDS. Image courtesy of \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CCR5_receptor%2Bmembrane.png\">Wikimedia Commons\u003c/a>.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back in 2007, an AIDS patient in Berlin Germany was told he would need a bone marrow transplant to treat his newly diagnosed leukemia. He and his doctor decided to seek out a donor who had the CCR5 delta 32 mutation. The hope was that this bone marrow transplant would treat both of his diseases at once. Their hope was realized: his leukemia went into remission and his viral load became undetectable. This bone marrow transplant cured his AIDS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bone marrow transplants replace a patient’s blood stem cells with the donor’s. What this means in this case is that the AIDS patient now had the donor’s blood cells coursing through his veins and these new blood cells lacked the CCR5 protein. Any HIV-1 he had in his system now had no way of making copies of itself which is why his viral load fell to the undetectable levels where they remain to this day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, scientists can’t do this for everyone with AIDS. Not only is the CCR5 delta 32 mutation rare enough that it would be impossible to find donor matches for all or even most AIDS patient, but bone marrow transplants are also dangerous, expensive treatments with a high mortality rate. No, we need a different way to use this mutation to help cure other AIDS patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way would be to engineer the mutation into a patient’s blood cells. Now we could avoid having to find a donor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is just what the folks at Sangamo Biosciences are trying to do. With the help of a \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/a-unique-hiv-case-inspires-new-research/\">team of academic collaborators\u003c/a> and money from \u003ca href=\"http://www.cirm.ca.gov/\">California Stem Cell Bond\u003c/a>, they have come up with a product called \u003ca href=\"http://www.sangamo.com/pipeline/sb-728.html\">SB-728\u003c/a> that can specifically inactivate the CCR5 gene in human cells. This treatment has even made it into clinical trials where so far the results appear to be encouraging (although \u003ca href=\"http://bir-llc.com/sb-728-t/\">not everyone agrees\u003c/a>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If this approach works, it would be a game changer for AIDS. The disease would go from being manageable to being functionally cured. And that isn’t all. There are other diseases that could be treated similarly. Success here could translate to a whole new way to get at other intractable diseases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is all very exciting, but I want to caution against getting our hopes up just yet. This specific treatment could still fail in ongoing clinical trials or even turn out to not be a permanent cure. But still, because of the Berlin patient, we know that if we can inactivate the CCR5 gene in a patient’s blood cells, we can cure his or her AIDS. So even if this approach fails, there may be other ways to kill this gene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Molecular Scissor Science\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_8130\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 250px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/MolecularScissors.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8130\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/09/MolecularScissors.jpg\" alt=\"Image courtesy of Dr. Stacey Wirt, Stanford University.\" width=\"250\" height=\"253\" class=\"size-full wp-image-8130\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image courtesy of Dr. Stacey Wirt, Stanford University.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The science behind this approach is very cool. The basic idea is to create a pair of molecular scissors that will cut human DNA only at the CCR5 gene. Once cut, our cells will wreck the gene in the process of repairing the DNA. Remember, a broken CCR5 gene means no CCR5 protein which means no HIV-1 infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The scissors part is easy. There are lots of enzymes whose job it is to cut DNA. The most famous are the restriction endonucleases from bacteria that serve as a part of their primitive immune system (they chop up invading viruses). In fact, molecular biology is built on these enzymes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time scientists at Sangamo started working on this approach, there were no natural enzymes specific enough for their purposes. The enzymes known at this time would cut human DNA at thousands of different places which would obviously be catastrophic. The patient would not survive such treatment.\u003cbr>\nSo the scientists needed to come up with a way to make these scissors only cut at the spot they wanted. There are a number of ways to do this but the scientists at Sangamo focused on natural DNA binders called zinc finger proteins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first step was to figure out how these zinc finger proteins recognize specific DNA sequences. With a lot of work, they came to understand this well enough that they could now create zinc fingers that recognize any three bases they were interested in. So they could whip up one that recognized ATG and another that could recognize CCC and so on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Three base pairs isn’t enough and in fact, is worse than any of the naturally available enzymes. To get at the 18-24 base pair recognition they needed, they decided to string together multiple zinc fingers. Now they had the specificity they needed. (I have simplified this mightily but it is the basic idea…click \u003ca href=\"http://www.zincfingers.org/default2.htm\">here \u003c/a>if you want to go deeper.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So the scientists whipped up a protein that could specifically recognize the CCR5 gene and attached the unfortunately named Fok1 as its scissors. This protein cuts the CCR5 gene in cells in the lab and in clinical trials. So far so good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We need to wait to see what happens, but these trials are definitely something we need to keep our eyes on. They may not only lead to a functional cure for AIDS, but they could also open up a whole new way to treat diseases.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/zDkUFzZoQAs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/zDkUFzZoQAs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A very nice explanation of zinc finger nucleases and a second type of scissors, TALENs.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "More California Parents Opting Out of Vaccines; Look Up Your School Online",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor's note: the story below is from 2013. To see more recent data, please see \u003ca title=\"Vaccine Opt-Out Rate Doubled in 7 Years\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2014/09/11/vaccine\" target=\"_blank\">this story published in early September, 2014.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Olivia Hubert-Allen and Lisa Aliferis\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the overwhelming medical evidence that childhood vaccinations are exceptionally effective at preventing disease, a growing number of parents are opting out of having their children vaccinated. While state law requires that children be fully vaccinated to enter kindergarten, California parents can get around this requirement simply by filing a personal belief exemption, or PBE, a signed statement saying that vaccines are counter to their beliefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PBE rates vary across the state, including by county (Marin has the highest \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/08/21/marin-vaccinations/\" target=\"_blank\">personal belief exemption rate\u003c/a> in the Bay Area at 7.8 percent), and also by individual school. The California Department of Public Health \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20California%20Kindergarten%20Data.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">compiles vaccination rates\u003c/a> and PBE rates statewide. Below, we've made it easy for you to look up your own child's school and see what the PBE rate is. You can also look at the data by county, city or school district. (PBE data for some schools was not provided.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The column to the far right -- \"%PBE\" -- shows the percentage of children at a kindergarten with a personal belief exemption on file. Ideally, that number should be zero, as it is at many schools statewide. Look up your child's school in the search box:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe src=\"http://www.kqed.org/news/health/vaccinations/pmerates.jsp\" width=\"640\" height=\"485\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!--more-->James Watt, chief of the communicable disease control division with the California Department of Public Health, called high personal belief rates \"a concern,\" especially \"because in some schools you really do have situations where you fall below a herd immunity threshold, and disease transmission is even more possible.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Herd immunity\" means that there's such a high vaccination rate that those who cannot be vaccinated, such as newborn infants or people with compromised immune systems, are protected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">[\u003cstrong>Related:\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/08/23/5-things-you-should-know-about-vaccines/\" target=\"_blank\">Five Things You Should Know About Vaccines\u003c/a>]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools are ripe places for disease transmission if kids aren't vaccinated. Kids don't have good \"cough etiquette,\" Watt noted, plus \"kids in schools have a lot of contact with each other.\" He stressed that the best thing parents can do is have their own children vaccinated. \"The vast majority of children who are vaccinated are protected.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more worrisome issue, he said, is for children who cannot be vaccinated for a medical reason. In that case, parents may want to weigh a school's PBE rate and consider what that means for their own child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's one piece of information that parents can use as they think about schools and their own children and what their risks may be,\" Watt said. \"Different children have different needs.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In January, a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2012/08/23/new-requirement-for-vaccine-exemption-passed-by-senate/\" target=\"_blank\">new state law goes into effect\u003c/a> requiring parents who want to opt out of vaccines to talk with a health care provider first about the pros and cons of both vaccines and communicable illnesses. Washington state passed a similar law in 2011, and their opt-out rate has since dropped by almost 40 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20CA%20Kindergarten%20Immunization%20Assessment.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">On a countywide basis\u003c/a>, the highest PBE rates are found in a collection of Northern California counties. Alpine, Calaveras, Del Norte, Humboldt, Mariposa, Siskiyou and Tuolomne counties all have PBE rates between 10.5 and 12.5 percent. Trinity County's rate is 15.93 and Nevada County's rate is 22.44, but both these counties have only a few hundred students in school, so it would take just a few children with PBEs to create the high percentage rate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, San Francisco County's PBE rate is 1.33 percent, and Los Angeles County's rate is 1.88 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Our methodology\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state conducts a \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20CA%20Kindergarten%20Immunization%20Assessment.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">kindergarten assessment\u003c/a> of vaccination rates each fall. The data shown above are from the 2012-2013 school year and reflect a survey of more than 500,000 children at 8,220 public and private kindergartens in California. The assessment is done at the school level and reported to local health departments and to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state then compiles \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20California%20Kindergarten%20Data.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a report of the immunization status\u003c/a> of all kindergarteners, a table with 26 columns of information. More than 90 percent of kindergarteners in the state start school fully immunized. But some children have \"conditional\" status, meaning they are lacking some vaccines but parents intend to get them. Officials told us they do not want to deny entrance to school because the child is not fully up-to-date, but is expected to be soon. Some parents are opposed to vaccines, so they have a \"personal belief exemption\" on file.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make it easier for readers to look up the PBE rate at their own school, we simplified the state's table. We did not alter the data in any individual column. Instead, we selected six of the 26 columns that we thought readers would find most interesting. In addition, we made the data sortable by county, city, school district and PBE rate. The state publishes a PDF of its data, which is not sortable. We asked the state for its Excel spreadsheet so that we could post this sortable version.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor's note: the story below is from 2013. To see more recent data, please see \u003ca title=\"Vaccine Opt-Out Rate Doubled in 7 Years\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2014/09/11/vaccine\" target=\"_blank\">this story published in early September, 2014.\u003c/a>\u003c/strong> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Olivia Hubert-Allen and Lisa Aliferis\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the overwhelming medical evidence that childhood vaccinations are exceptionally effective at preventing disease, a growing number of parents are opting out of having their children vaccinated. While state law requires that children be fully vaccinated to enter kindergarten, California parents can get around this requirement simply by filing a personal belief exemption, or PBE, a signed statement saying that vaccines are counter to their beliefs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PBE rates vary across the state, including by county (Marin has the highest \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/08/21/marin-vaccinations/\" target=\"_blank\">personal belief exemption rate\u003c/a> in the Bay Area at 7.8 percent), and also by individual school. The California Department of Public Health \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20California%20Kindergarten%20Data.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">compiles vaccination rates\u003c/a> and PBE rates statewide. Below, we've made it easy for you to look up your own child's school and see what the PBE rate is. You can also look at the data by county, city or school district. (PBE data for some schools was not provided.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The column to the far right -- \"%PBE\" -- shows the percentage of children at a kindergarten with a personal belief exemption on file. Ideally, that number should be zero, as it is at many schools statewide. Look up your child's school in the search box:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe src=\"http://www.kqed.org/news/health/vaccinations/pmerates.jsp\" width=\"640\" height=\"485\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!--more-->James Watt, chief of the communicable disease control division with the California Department of Public Health, called high personal belief rates \"a concern,\" especially \"because in some schools you really do have situations where you fall below a herd immunity threshold, and disease transmission is even more possible.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Herd immunity\" means that there's such a high vaccination rate that those who cannot be vaccinated, such as newborn infants or people with compromised immune systems, are protected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">[\u003cstrong>Related:\u003c/strong> \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/08/23/5-things-you-should-know-about-vaccines/\" target=\"_blank\">Five Things You Should Know About Vaccines\u003c/a>]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools are ripe places for disease transmission if kids aren't vaccinated. Kids don't have good \"cough etiquette,\" Watt noted, plus \"kids in schools have a lot of contact with each other.\" He stressed that the best thing parents can do is have their own children vaccinated. \"The vast majority of children who are vaccinated are protected.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more worrisome issue, he said, is for children who cannot be vaccinated for a medical reason. In that case, parents may want to weigh a school's PBE rate and consider what that means for their own child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's one piece of information that parents can use as they think about schools and their own children and what their risks may be,\" Watt said. \"Different children have different needs.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In January, a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2012/08/23/new-requirement-for-vaccine-exemption-passed-by-senate/\" target=\"_blank\">new state law goes into effect\u003c/a> requiring parents who want to opt out of vaccines to talk with a health care provider first about the pros and cons of both vaccines and communicable illnesses. Washington state passed a similar law in 2011, and their opt-out rate has since dropped by almost 40 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20CA%20Kindergarten%20Immunization%20Assessment.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">On a countywide basis\u003c/a>, the highest PBE rates are found in a collection of Northern California counties. Alpine, Calaveras, Del Norte, Humboldt, Mariposa, Siskiyou and Tuolomne counties all have PBE rates between 10.5 and 12.5 percent. Trinity County's rate is 15.93 and Nevada County's rate is 22.44, but both these counties have only a few hundred students in school, so it would take just a few children with PBEs to create the high percentage rate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By contrast, San Francisco County's PBE rate is 1.33 percent, and Los Angeles County's rate is 1.88 percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Our methodology\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state conducts a \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20CA%20Kindergarten%20Immunization%20Assessment.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">kindergarten assessment\u003c/a> of vaccination rates each fall. The data shown above are from the 2012-2013 school year and reflect a survey of more than 500,000 children at 8,220 public and private kindergartens in California. The assessment is done at the school level and reported to local health departments and to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The state then compiles \u003ca href=\"http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/immunize/Documents/2012-2013%20California%20Kindergarten%20Data.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a report of the immunization status\u003c/a> of all kindergarteners, a table with 26 columns of information. More than 90 percent of kindergarteners in the state start school fully immunized. But some children have \"conditional\" status, meaning they are lacking some vaccines but parents intend to get them. Officials told us they do not want to deny entrance to school because the child is not fully up-to-date, but is expected to be soon. Some parents are opposed to vaccines, so they have a \"personal belief exemption\" on file.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make it easier for readers to look up the PBE rate at their own school, we simplified the state's table. We did not alter the data in any individual column. Instead, we selected six of the 26 columns that we thought readers would find most interesting. In addition, we made the data sortable by county, city, school district and PBE rate. The state publishes a PDF of its data, which is not sortable. We asked the state for its Excel spreadsheet so that we could post this sortable version.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14679\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/08/106512124-e1377898062785.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14679\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/08/106512124-640x426.jpg\" alt=\"(Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/people/137765146/shankar-vedantam\" target=\"_blank\">By Shankar Vedantam\u003c/a>,\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/08/30/216479305/money-may-be-motivating-doctors-to-do-more-c-sections\" target=\"_blank\"> NPR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obstetricians perform more cesarean sections when there are financial incentives to do so, according to a new study that explores links between economic incentives and medical decision-making during childbirth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/08/31/129552505/cesarean-sections-stay-popular\">1 in 3\u003c/a> babies born today is delivered via C-section, compared to 1 in 5 babies delivered via the surgical procedure in 1996. During the same time period, the annual medical costs of childbirth in the U.S. have grown by $3 billion annually. There are \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/09/13/129826908/C-sections-and-the-profit-motive\">significant variations\u003c/a> in the rate of cesarean deliveries in different parts of the country — in Louisiana, for example, the C-section rate is nearly twice as high as in Alaska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obstetricians in many medical settings are paid more for C-sections. In a new working \u003ca href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2295856\">paper\u003c/a> published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, health care economists \u003ca href=\"http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=50047\">Erin Johnson\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.cifar.ca/m-marit-rehavi\">M. Marit Rehavi\u003c/a> calculated that doctors might make a few hundred dollars more for a C-section compared to a vaginal delivery, and a hospital might make a few thousand dollars more.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson and Rehavi decided to explore the reasons for the increased number of surgical childbirth procedures via an unusual tack: They hypothesized that obstetricians would be less likely to be swayed by financial incentives when patients themselves had significant medical expertise and knowledge. By contrast, the researchers figured, such incentives might play a larger role in medical decision-making when patients knew very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some ways, this is analogous to what happens when people take their cars to mechanics. People who are knowledgeable about cars are likely to push back against unnecessary repairs, whereas those who don't know much about cars are less likely to take issue with the mechanic's advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In childbirth, Johnson and Rehavi figured, this meant that obstetricians would perform fewer C-sections when their patients were themselves doctors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The idea is that physicians have medical knowledge,\" Johnson says. \"If the obstetrician is deviating from the best treatment because of their own financial incentive, the patient [who is a] doctor would be able to push back against the obstetrician. But that might not be the case for nondoctors because they simply do not have the medical knowledge to know whether or not this C-section is the appropriate [method of delivery] for them.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers tracked large numbers of births in California and Texas via databases that checked to see whether the mothers were themselves doctors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We found that doctors are about 10 percent less likely to get C-sections,\" Johnson says. \"So obstetricians appear to be treating their physician patients differently than [they treat] their nonphysician patients.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson says she thinks it unlikely that the doctors are conscious of the role financial incentives seem to be playing in their decisions. Rather, she says, a variety of analyses by economists suggests that incentives affect behavior in many different ways — often subtly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, Johnson and Rehavi found that there was no disparity in the C-section rate between physician mothers and nonphysician mothers when the surgical procedures were scheduled in advance. Scheduled C-section decisions tend to be less subjective — a variety of medical conditions, such as a baby being in the breech position, call for a C-section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather, she says, the disparity came about in what are known as unscheduled C-sections, when labor is attempted but does not go well. Patient and obstetrician then find themselves in a gray zone, where a judgment has to be made about whether to terminate labor and deliver the baby surgically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson and Rehavi also analyzed disparities in medical settings where doctors were paid a flat salary. In these cases, Johnson and Rehavi found there was a disincentive to perform the surgical procedures, which typically involve more time. In these settings, more of the mothers who were physicians received C-sections than mothers who were not physicians. Presumably, Johnson says, this means that some nonphysician mothers who needed C-sections did not get them in these settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson suggests that one solution to the disparities lies in better patient knowledge and empowerment.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Obstetricians perform more cesarean sections when there are financial incentives to do so, according to a new study that explores links between economic incentives and medical decision-making during childbirth.\r\n\r\nAbout 1 in 3 babies born today is delivered via C-section, compared to 1 in 5 babies delivered via the surgical procedure in 1996. During the same time period, the annual medical costs of childbirth in the U.S. have grown by $3 billion annually. There are significant variations in the rate of cesarean deliveries in different parts of the country — in Louisiana, for example, the C-section rate is nearly twice as high as in Alaska.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_14679\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/08/106512124-e1377898062785.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-14679\" title=\"\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/27/2013/08/106512124-640x426.jpg\" alt=\"(Getty Images)\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/people/137765146/shankar-vedantam\" target=\"_blank\">By Shankar Vedantam\u003c/a>,\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/08/30/216479305/money-may-be-motivating-doctors-to-do-more-c-sections\" target=\"_blank\"> NPR\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obstetricians perform more cesarean sections when there are financial incentives to do so, according to a new study that explores links between economic incentives and medical decision-making during childbirth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/08/31/129552505/cesarean-sections-stay-popular\">1 in 3\u003c/a> babies born today is delivered via C-section, compared to 1 in 5 babies delivered via the surgical procedure in 1996. During the same time period, the annual medical costs of childbirth in the U.S. have grown by $3 billion annually. There are \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/09/13/129826908/C-sections-and-the-profit-motive\">significant variations\u003c/a> in the rate of cesarean deliveries in different parts of the country — in Louisiana, for example, the C-section rate is nearly twice as high as in Alaska.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obstetricians in many medical settings are paid more for C-sections. In a new working \u003ca href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2295856\">paper\u003c/a> published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, health care economists \u003ca href=\"http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=50047\">Erin Johnson\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.cifar.ca/m-marit-rehavi\">M. Marit Rehavi\u003c/a> calculated that doctors might make a few hundred dollars more for a C-section compared to a vaginal delivery, and a hospital might make a few thousand dollars more.\u003c!--more-->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson and Rehavi decided to explore the reasons for the increased number of surgical childbirth procedures via an unusual tack: They hypothesized that obstetricians would be less likely to be swayed by financial incentives when patients themselves had significant medical expertise and knowledge. By contrast, the researchers figured, such incentives might play a larger role in medical decision-making when patients knew very little.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In some ways, this is analogous to what happens when people take their cars to mechanics. People who are knowledgeable about cars are likely to push back against unnecessary repairs, whereas those who don't know much about cars are less likely to take issue with the mechanic's advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In childbirth, Johnson and Rehavi figured, this meant that obstetricians would perform fewer C-sections when their patients were themselves doctors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The idea is that physicians have medical knowledge,\" Johnson says. \"If the obstetrician is deviating from the best treatment because of their own financial incentive, the patient [who is a] doctor would be able to push back against the obstetrician. But that might not be the case for nondoctors because they simply do not have the medical knowledge to know whether or not this C-section is the appropriate [method of delivery] for them.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The researchers tracked large numbers of births in California and Texas via databases that checked to see whether the mothers were themselves doctors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We found that doctors are about 10 percent less likely to get C-sections,\" Johnson says. \"So obstetricians appear to be treating their physician patients differently than [they treat] their nonphysician patients.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson says she thinks it unlikely that the doctors are conscious of the role financial incentives seem to be playing in their decisions. Rather, she says, a variety of analyses by economists suggests that incentives affect behavior in many different ways — often subtly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, Johnson and Rehavi found that there was no disparity in the C-section rate between physician mothers and nonphysician mothers when the surgical procedures were scheduled in advance. Scheduled C-section decisions tend to be less subjective — a variety of medical conditions, such as a baby being in the breech position, call for a C-section.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather, she says, the disparity came about in what are known as unscheduled C-sections, when labor is attempted but does not go well. Patient and obstetrician then find themselves in a gray zone, where a judgment has to be made about whether to terminate labor and deliver the baby surgically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson and Rehavi also analyzed disparities in medical settings where doctors were paid a flat salary. In these cases, Johnson and Rehavi found there was a disincentive to perform the surgical procedures, which typically involve more time. In these settings, more of the mothers who were physicians received C-sections than mothers who were not physicians. Presumably, Johnson says, this means that some nonphysician mothers who needed C-sections did not get them in these settings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Johnson suggests that one solution to the disparities lies in better patient knowledge and empowerment.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "New Portable Device Rapidly Measures Radiation Exposure",
"headTitle": "New Portable Device Rapidly Measures Radiation Exposure | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7675\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/MagArray-Cartridge-System-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/MagArray-Cartridge-System-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Scientists are developing a portable device that can measure a person's radiation exposure in minutes using radiation-induced changes in the concentrations of certain blood proteins. This image shows a magneto-nanosensor chip reader station, chip cartridge, and chip. (Credit: S. Wang)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"size-large wp-image-7675\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scientists are developing a portable device that can measure a person’s radiation exposure in minutes using radiation-induced changes in the concentrations of certain blood proteins. This image shows a magneto-nanosensor chip reader station, chip cartridge, and chip. (Credit: S. Wang)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Picture the scene of the \u003ca href=\"http://world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Fukushima-Accident-2011/#.UhzbF-DR38s\" title=\"Fukushima Nuclear Accident\">Fukushima nuclear accident\u003c/a>. The Daiichi nuclear reactors were hit by an earthquake of magnitude 9.0, then flooded by the resulting 15-meter deep tsunami which caused a nuclear meltdown and release of radioactive materials. Over 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes due to the threat of radiation contamination. Although no deaths occurred due to the nuclear accident, there was potential for mass casualties since radiation can induce immediate and persistent damage to internal organs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a large-scale radiological incident like the Fukushima nuclear disaster, emergency medical personnel need a rapid way to assess radiation exposure and identify those who require immediate care. This radiation-dosimetry technology needs to be sensitive, accurate, fast and easy to use in a non-clinical setting. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local scientists have developed a small, portable device that can quickly test the level of radiation exposure victims have suffered in such radiological emergencies. This technology was developed by scientists from Berkeley Lab, Stanford University and several other institutions, as reported in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130719/srep02234/full/srep02234.html\" title=\"Scientific Reports journal article\">journal article\u003c/a> recently published in \u003cem>Scientific Reports\u003c/em>. The lead researchers were Dr. Shan Wang from Stanford University and Dr. Andrew Wyrobek from Berkeley Lab. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This new dosimetry device is a novel type of immunoassay. Immunoassays are chemical tests used to detect or measure the quantity of a specific substance in a body fluid sample using a reaction of the immune system. For example, a common immunoassay test for pregnancy measures the concentration of the human chorionic gonadotropin hormone in a woman’s blood or urine sample.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to measure a person’s radiation dose, the new device measures blood samples for the concentration of particular proteins that change after radiation exposure. Scientists, including those in Wyrobek’s group, have previously identified these target proteins as excellent biological markers for radiation dosimetry; blood exposed to radiation has a special biochemical signature. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists needed more than just target proteins. They also needed an accurate, sensitive way to quickly measure the proteins’ concentrations in a few drops of blood. So at the heart of the new device is a biochip developed by Wang’s group. This \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22763391\" title=\"Biomed Microdevices journal article\">biochip\u003c/a> uses magnetic nanoparticles and giant magnetoresistive nanosensors, so it is more sensitive and faster than conventional immunoassay techniques. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biochip system relies on a sandwich structure where a target protein is trapped between a capture antibody and a detection antibody. The capture antibodies are immobilized on the surface of the biochip sensor. When a drop of blood is placed on the biochip, those antibodies capture the target proteins and the other proteins are washed away. Detection antibodies labeled with magnetic nanoparticles are then added, forming a sandwich structure that traps the target proteins. When an external oscillating magnetic field is then applied, the magnetic nanoparticles generate an electrical signal that is read out. This signal measures the number of magnetic nanoparticles bound to the surface, and this indicates the number of target proteins that have been trapped. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They tested the biochip system using blood from mice that had been exposed to varying levels of radiation. These novel immunoassay results were validated by comparing them with conventional ELISA immunoassay measurements. Overall, the scientists demonstrated that the new biochip dosimetry system is fast, accurate, sensitive and robust. In addition, the whole system is the size of a shoebox so it is very portable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You add a drop of blood, wait a few minutes, and get results,” explained Wyrobek in a \u003ca href=\"http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2013/08/14/biochip-radiation-exposure/\" title=\"Berkeley Lab press release\">press release\u003c/a>. “The chip could lead to a much-needed way to quickly triage people after possible radiation exposure.” Although the technology is still underdevelopment, hopefully it will be available before the next radiological accident or terrorist attack occurs. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7675\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/MagArray-Cartridge-System-1024x768.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/MagArray-Cartridge-System-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"Scientists are developing a portable device that can measure a person's radiation exposure in minutes using radiation-induced changes in the concentrations of certain blood proteins. This image shows a magneto-nanosensor chip reader station, chip cartridge, and chip. (Credit: S. Wang)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" class=\"size-large wp-image-7675\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Scientists are developing a portable device that can measure a person’s radiation exposure in minutes using radiation-induced changes in the concentrations of certain blood proteins. This image shows a magneto-nanosensor chip reader station, chip cartridge, and chip. (Credit: S. Wang)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Picture the scene of the \u003ca href=\"http://world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Fukushima-Accident-2011/#.UhzbF-DR38s\" title=\"Fukushima Nuclear Accident\">Fukushima nuclear accident\u003c/a>. The Daiichi nuclear reactors were hit by an earthquake of magnitude 9.0, then flooded by the resulting 15-meter deep tsunami which caused a nuclear meltdown and release of radioactive materials. Over 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes due to the threat of radiation contamination. Although no deaths occurred due to the nuclear accident, there was potential for mass casualties since radiation can induce immediate and persistent damage to internal organs. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a large-scale radiological incident like the Fukushima nuclear disaster, emergency medical personnel need a rapid way to assess radiation exposure and identify those who require immediate care. This radiation-dosimetry technology needs to be sensitive, accurate, fast and easy to use in a non-clinical setting. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local scientists have developed a small, portable device that can quickly test the level of radiation exposure victims have suffered in such radiological emergencies. This technology was developed by scientists from Berkeley Lab, Stanford University and several other institutions, as reported in a \u003ca href=\"http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130719/srep02234/full/srep02234.html\" title=\"Scientific Reports journal article\">journal article\u003c/a> recently published in \u003cem>Scientific Reports\u003c/em>. The lead researchers were Dr. Shan Wang from Stanford University and Dr. Andrew Wyrobek from Berkeley Lab. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This new dosimetry device is a novel type of immunoassay. Immunoassays are chemical tests used to detect or measure the quantity of a specific substance in a body fluid sample using a reaction of the immune system. For example, a common immunoassay test for pregnancy measures the concentration of the human chorionic gonadotropin hormone in a woman’s blood or urine sample.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In order to measure a person’s radiation dose, the new device measures blood samples for the concentration of particular proteins that change after radiation exposure. Scientists, including those in Wyrobek’s group, have previously identified these target proteins as excellent biological markers for radiation dosimetry; blood exposed to radiation has a special biochemical signature. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But scientists needed more than just target proteins. They also needed an accurate, sensitive way to quickly measure the proteins’ concentrations in a few drops of blood. So at the heart of the new device is a biochip developed by Wang’s group. This \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22763391\" title=\"Biomed Microdevices journal article\">biochip\u003c/a> uses magnetic nanoparticles and giant magnetoresistive nanosensors, so it is more sensitive and faster than conventional immunoassay techniques. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The biochip system relies on a sandwich structure where a target protein is trapped between a capture antibody and a detection antibody. The capture antibodies are immobilized on the surface of the biochip sensor. When a drop of blood is placed on the biochip, those antibodies capture the target proteins and the other proteins are washed away. Detection antibodies labeled with magnetic nanoparticles are then added, forming a sandwich structure that traps the target proteins. When an external oscillating magnetic field is then applied, the magnetic nanoparticles generate an electrical signal that is read out. This signal measures the number of magnetic nanoparticles bound to the surface, and this indicates the number of target proteins that have been trapped. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They tested the biochip system using blood from mice that had been exposed to varying levels of radiation. These novel immunoassay results were validated by comparing them with conventional ELISA immunoassay measurements. Overall, the scientists demonstrated that the new biochip dosimetry system is fast, accurate, sensitive and robust. In addition, the whole system is the size of a shoebox so it is very portable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You add a drop of blood, wait a few minutes, and get results,” explained Wyrobek in a \u003ca href=\"http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2013/08/14/biochip-radiation-exposure/\" title=\"Berkeley Lab press release\">press release\u003c/a>. “The chip could lead to a much-needed way to quickly triage people after possible radiation exposure.” Although the technology is still underdevelopment, hopefully it will be available before the next radiological accident or terrorist attack occurs. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2013/09/2013-09-02-science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>More and more people are tracking sexual activity on their smartphones. We’re not talking about watching X-rated videos. Rather, we mean fertility apps for getting pregnant, the newest high-tech trend in helping people conceive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Natural Resources, a baby store in San Francisco’s Mission district, it’s not hard to find couples who track their sexual activity online. Lorraine Acosta is 15 weeks pregnant and attending her first pre-natal class. While the 30-year-old wants to give birth the old-fashioned way, she got pregnant with the help of an app called \u003ca href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sleekbit.ovuview&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dovuview+iphone\">OvuView\u003c/a>. “I’m an Android user,” Acosta says, “so I like this app for Android.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OvuView has more than 18,000 reviews in the app store, and gets mostly five out of five stars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a woman is ovulating, her body temperature at rest goes up a degree or so. The app asks you to log that temperature before getting out of bed every morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It synched with my alarm,” Acosta says. “So everyday when my alarm went on, the app also showed a notification.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The app also asks women to describe, on a daily basis, the quality of the mucus coming from their cervix. As the mucus goes from creamy and thick to clear like an egg white, a woman is getting more fertile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many women would feel anxious logging so much personal information, Acosta says the app made her feel more in control. The very month she and her husband Andres Ornelas wanted to conceive, she got pregnant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acosta says the app did not dictate when she and her husband should have sex. “It just told me when I was more fertile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Is it for fertility or sexual preferences? I don’t know!”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Dozens of self-tracking apps have popped up on the market in the last few years to help women find their fertility window. One new high-profile app called \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glow-conceive-confidence/id638021335?mt=8\">Glow \u003c/a>is going a step further, and asking some very personal questions about sexual activity—questions like: Was the woman’s position on the bottom, in front, on top, other? Was there a female orgasm? Was there emotional discomfort? Sad, angry, or stressed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acosta laughs when she reads through the list. “Is it for fertility or sexual preferences,” she said, “I don’t know!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ornelas raises his eyebrows. “I’m kind of curious what it does with the answers that you give it,” he says. “Those seem like questions that I’ve never seen related to fertility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s mostly right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fertility specialists say there’s no consensus on how stress can impact pregnancy. Studies show female orgasm has little to no effect on pregnancy. As to the impact of sexual positions on fertility—there’s not much serious research there, either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7717\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/glowapp-e1377741180195-1024x813.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7717\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-7717\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/glowapp-e1377741180195-1024x813.jpg\" alt=\"Glow Founder Max Levchin says he's asking personal questions because his start-up is a science experiment.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"813\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Glow Founder Max Levchin says he’s asking personal questions because his start-up is a science experiment.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Glow is based in San Francisco. The founder, Max Levchin, is a computer scientist, and Levchin says his company is running a science experiment. “Part of our responsibility here,” he said, “is to actually gather enough data to run a study and say, ‘You know what? People conceived faster if they tried it on their back.’ Or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levchin is the same Big Data scientist who helped launch PayPal in 1999. The payment service looks at what people buy online to try to predict what they want next. Glow wants to use crowdsourcing to figure out if certain myths about pregnancy are actually facts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As soon as we have a couple hundred thousand data points,” Levchin says, “we’ll probably have the single largest study correlating sexual position to speed of conception.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glow stores all its data on the cloud. Sexual position is arguably more sensitive data than a credit card number, and this app does not\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>strip people’s names from their responses. Levchin says that’s a service, if a Glow app user needs to visit a fertility doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You actually want to show up with a log that that person can understand,” Levchin says. “They can look at and say, ‘Oh, you’ve been tracking your data. Let me tell you what your options are.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctor Marcelle Cedars is a fertility specialist at the University of California San Francisco. She is skeptical of the medical value of fertility tracking apps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cedars says she tries to make things as simple and low stress as possible for couples early in the process. “The more sort of boxes you put around their sexuality, to me, tends to increase stress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cedars points out the data that Glow is collecting may not end up being useful for science: the women who choose to use Glow may not represent women in general. And these women may not tell the truth about their sexual activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cedars also says fertility apps have to be crystal clear about whom they cannot help. These apps assume a woman is ovulating regularly. “But if you’re having periods every two to three months,” she says, “you may not be ovulating at all. There need to be some windows saying, ‘maybe you should talk to your doctor.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Glow app is free. Founder Max Levchin says he’s not worried about making money just yet. He’s focused on getting new users.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“As soon as we have a couple hundred thousand data points, we’ll probably have the single largest study correlating sexual position to speed of conception.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Levchin put a million dollars of his own money into Glow First, a non-profit fund offered as a premium service for app users who need to see a fertility specialist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a strong way to drive adoption so people use the app,” says Andrew Farquharson, Managing Director of InCube Ventures, “but over time that approach isn’t going to be sustainable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farquharson is a venture capitalist who invests in life science apps, but he says fertility apps are not ripe for investment because they don’t improve medical outcomes. With diabetes and heart patients, monitors that track blood sugar and heart rate “are better than going to a doctor once a day because they operate continuously.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s waiting for products like Glow to integrate sensors. “When women don’t have to pee on a stick to know if they’re pregnant, I’ll reconsider.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levchin is toying with other ways to make his app profitable. Currently Glow has a companion edition for the partner of the woman trying to conceive. Using data about her mood and ovulation, Levchin says, Glow makes suggestions like, “This might be an excellent time to send a bouquet of flowers or book a spa trip.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levchin says he’s not yet planning to integrate such features with commercial websites like flowers.com or hotels.com. “But since I am on Yelp’s board,” he says, “I know exactly where to look for the best florists and spa. And we actually talked about it when we were designing this thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Andres Ornelas, the father-to-be from the baby store, calls that idea “kind of creepy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ornelas is a fan of self-tracking, but doesn’t want an app that intrudes on his marriage. “If an app told me, ‘Oh it’s that time of the month to buy flowers for your wife,’ then I feel like I’m not giving them the flowers. I feel like the app is doing it for me, so it’s pointless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the guy who always forgets to buy flowers might just like that feature. Fertility apps are still seeking their niche. After all, they’re only in their infancy. The start-up Glow hasn’t even reached its first trimester.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Fertility apps are the newest high-tech trend in helping people conceive. There are dozens of apps on the market that help women find their fertility window. One high-profile app is going a step further, and asking some very personal questions. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cdiv class=\"audio-wrap\">\n\u003ch2>Listen:\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/science/2013/09/2013-09-02-science.mp3\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>More and more people are tracking sexual activity on their smartphones. We’re not talking about watching X-rated videos. Rather, we mean fertility apps for getting pregnant, the newest high-tech trend in helping people conceive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Natural Resources, a baby store in San Francisco’s Mission district, it’s not hard to find couples who track their sexual activity online. Lorraine Acosta is 15 weeks pregnant and attending her first pre-natal class. While the 30-year-old wants to give birth the old-fashioned way, she got pregnant with the help of an app called \u003ca href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sleekbit.ovuview&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dovuview+iphone\">OvuView\u003c/a>. “I’m an Android user,” Acosta says, “so I like this app for Android.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OvuView has more than 18,000 reviews in the app store, and gets mostly five out of five stars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a woman is ovulating, her body temperature at rest goes up a degree or so. The app asks you to log that temperature before getting out of bed every morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It synched with my alarm,” Acosta says. “So everyday when my alarm went on, the app also showed a notification.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The app also asks women to describe, on a daily basis, the quality of the mucus coming from their cervix. As the mucus goes from creamy and thick to clear like an egg white, a woman is getting more fertile.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many women would feel anxious logging so much personal information, Acosta says the app made her feel more in control. The very month she and her husband Andres Ornelas wanted to conceive, she got pregnant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acosta says the app did not dictate when she and her husband should have sex. “It just told me when I was more fertile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“Is it for fertility or sexual preferences? I don’t know!”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Dozens of self-tracking apps have popped up on the market in the last few years to help women find their fertility window. One new high-profile app called \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glow-conceive-confidence/id638021335?mt=8\">Glow \u003c/a>is going a step further, and asking some very personal questions about sexual activity—questions like: Was the woman’s position on the bottom, in front, on top, other? Was there a female orgasm? Was there emotional discomfort? Sad, angry, or stressed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Acosta laughs when she reads through the list. “Is it for fertility or sexual preferences,” she said, “I don’t know!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ornelas raises his eyebrows. “I’m kind of curious what it does with the answers that you give it,” he says. “Those seem like questions that I’ve never seen related to fertility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s mostly right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fertility specialists say there’s no consensus on how stress can impact pregnancy. Studies show female orgasm has little to no effect on pregnancy. As to the impact of sexual positions on fertility—there’s not much serious research there, either.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7717\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/glowapp-e1377741180195-1024x813.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7717\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-7717\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/glowapp-e1377741180195-1024x813.jpg\" alt=\"Glow Founder Max Levchin says he's asking personal questions because his start-up is a science experiment.\" width=\"1024\" height=\"813\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Glow Founder Max Levchin says he’s asking personal questions because his start-up is a science experiment.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Glow is based in San Francisco. The founder, Max Levchin, is a computer scientist, and Levchin says his company is running a science experiment. “Part of our responsibility here,” he said, “is to actually gather enough data to run a study and say, ‘You know what? People conceived faster if they tried it on their back.’ Or not.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levchin is the same Big Data scientist who helped launch PayPal in 1999. The payment service looks at what people buy online to try to predict what they want next. Glow wants to use crowdsourcing to figure out if certain myths about pregnancy are actually facts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As soon as we have a couple hundred thousand data points,” Levchin says, “we’ll probably have the single largest study correlating sexual position to speed of conception.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Glow stores all its data on the cloud. Sexual position is arguably more sensitive data than a credit card number, and this app does not\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>strip people’s names from their responses. Levchin says that’s a service, if a Glow app user needs to visit a fertility doctor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You actually want to show up with a log that that person can understand,” Levchin says. “They can look at and say, ‘Oh, you’ve been tracking your data. Let me tell you what your options are.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctor Marcelle Cedars is a fertility specialist at the University of California San Francisco. She is skeptical of the medical value of fertility tracking apps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cedars says she tries to make things as simple and low stress as possible for couples early in the process. “The more sort of boxes you put around their sexuality, to me, tends to increase stress.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cedars points out the data that Glow is collecting may not end up being useful for science: the women who choose to use Glow may not represent women in general. And these women may not tell the truth about their sexual activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cedars also says fertility apps have to be crystal clear about whom they cannot help. These apps assume a woman is ovulating regularly. “But if you’re having periods every two to three months,” she says, “you may not be ovulating at all. There need to be some windows saying, ‘maybe you should talk to your doctor.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Glow app is free. Founder Max Levchin says he’s not worried about making money just yet. He’s focused on getting new users.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“As soon as we have a couple hundred thousand data points, we’ll probably have the single largest study correlating sexual position to speed of conception.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Levchin put a million dollars of his own money into Glow First, a non-profit fund offered as a premium service for app users who need to see a fertility specialist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s a strong way to drive adoption so people use the app,” says Andrew Farquharson, Managing Director of InCube Ventures, “but over time that approach isn’t going to be sustainable.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Farquharson is a venture capitalist who invests in life science apps, but he says fertility apps are not ripe for investment because they don’t improve medical outcomes. With diabetes and heart patients, monitors that track blood sugar and heart rate “are better than going to a doctor once a day because they operate continuously.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s waiting for products like Glow to integrate sensors. “When women don’t have to pee on a stick to know if they’re pregnant, I’ll reconsider.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levchin is toying with other ways to make his app profitable. Currently Glow has a companion edition for the partner of the woman trying to conceive. Using data about her mood and ovulation, Levchin says, Glow makes suggestions like, “This might be an excellent time to send a bouquet of flowers or book a spa trip.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Levchin says he’s not yet planning to integrate such features with commercial websites like flowers.com or hotels.com. “But since I am on Yelp’s board,” he says, “I know exactly where to look for the best florists and spa. And we actually talked about it when we were designing this thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Andres Ornelas, the father-to-be from the baby store, calls that idea “kind of creepy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ornelas is a fan of self-tracking, but doesn’t want an app that intrudes on his marriage. “If an app told me, ‘Oh it’s that time of the month to buy flowers for your wife,’ then I feel like I’m not giving them the flowers. I feel like the app is doing it for me, so it’s pointless.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the guy who always forgets to buy flowers might just like that feature. Fertility apps are still seeking their niche. After all, they’re only in their infancy. The start-up Glow hasn’t even reached its first trimester.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Wildfires a Growing Air Quality Issue",
"headTitle": "Wildfires a Growing Air Quality Issue | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7566\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/1_mobile_ynp_1-1344_rimfire-e1377565966237.jpeg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7566\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7566\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/1_mobile_ynp_1-1344_rimfire-e1377565966237.jpeg\" alt=\"Smoke plume from the Rim Fire, as it intensified last week. Photo: USFS\" width=\"640\" height=\"358\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smoke plume from the Rim Fire, as it intensified last week. Photo: USFS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Where there’s fire, there’s smoke. And when the fire is more than 200 square miles and growing like California’s Rim Fire, \u003ca title=\"NewsFix - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/08/23/rim-fire-update-smoke-spreads-from/\">there’s a lot of it\u003c/a>. And in that smoke is quite the witch’s brew of air pollutants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"NCAR - Pfister\" href=\"https://www2.ucar.edu/news/experts/gabriele-pfister\">Gabriele Pfister\u003c/a> runs down just some of the list: “You have carbon monoxide, you have mercury, you have nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide.” Pfister studies the air quality impacts of wildfires, at the \u003ca title=\"NCAR - main\" href=\"http://ncar.ucar.edu/\">National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)\u003c/a>. And then of course, you have all kinds of particulate matter, which is what we tend to notice — the large particles that we see and smell and commonly think of as smoke. But Pfister says, “Size matters.” The human body is fairly efficient at filtering the big stuff, by coughing or sneezing it out. It’s the smaller stuff that’s more insidious.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“This is not just a local issue.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“The smaller they get, the more likely you breathe them in,” says Pfister, “deeper into our lungs and all the way into the bloodstream they can go.” That, she says, can contribute to respiratory and heart ailments later on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And \u003ca title=\"NCAR - post\" href=\"http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/wildfires.shtml\">these things get around\u003c/a>. Pfister says the pollutants can rise six miles into the air and there, driven by high winds in the upper atmosphere, can end up contributing to air pollution hundreds of miles away. “It’s not infrequent that we here in Colorado see smoke from wildfires in California,” she noted. “This is not just a local issue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the contrary, it’s “global” in the literal sense when you account for the greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and black carbon, though fires remain a relatively small contributor to global warming, compared to the more intentional burning of fossil fuels. And Pfister notes, perhaps searching for something positive in all this, that at least when the forest grows back, it will resume siphoning CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it again. And she adds that some of the particle emissions, or aerosols, tend to “scatter sunlight” and create at least a short-term cooling effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given the generally accepted forecast of more intense fires driven by climate disruption, however, Pfister expects wildfires to become a larger share of the overall air pollution problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for calculating exactly how much gunk is going up there, Pfister says that gets complicated. She says part of the problem is in how you define “smoke,” and when it’s heavy enough to constitute a plume. “Then it depends on how big the fire is, how much biomass is burned, how active is the fire (is it flaming and strongly convective, is it laying down and smoldering), how fast and slow the winds move the smoke,” and so on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larger “fallout” can cause different types of problems. Early this week, officials were grappling with how to respond to the ash raining down on San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, near the fire’s eastern front in Yosemite. The fast-growing blaze posed potential problems for both the water supply and hydropower output. Monday, city power officials had idled two of the dam’s three hydropower units as the fire advanced.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_7566\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/1_mobile_ynp_1-1344_rimfire-e1377565966237.jpeg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7566\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7566\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/1_mobile_ynp_1-1344_rimfire-e1377565966237.jpeg\" alt=\"Smoke plume from the Rim Fire, as it intensified last week. Photo: USFS\" width=\"640\" height=\"358\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smoke plume from the Rim Fire, as it intensified last week. Photo: USFS\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Where there’s fire, there’s smoke. And when the fire is more than 200 square miles and growing like California’s Rim Fire, \u003ca title=\"NewsFix - post\" href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/08/23/rim-fire-update-smoke-spreads-from/\">there’s a lot of it\u003c/a>. And in that smoke is quite the witch’s brew of air pollutants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"NCAR - Pfister\" href=\"https://www2.ucar.edu/news/experts/gabriele-pfister\">Gabriele Pfister\u003c/a> runs down just some of the list: “You have carbon monoxide, you have mercury, you have nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide.” Pfister studies the air quality impacts of wildfires, at the \u003ca title=\"NCAR - main\" href=\"http://ncar.ucar.edu/\">National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)\u003c/a>. And then of course, you have all kinds of particulate matter, which is what we tend to notice — the large particles that we see and smell and commonly think of as smoke. But Pfister says, “Size matters.” The human body is fairly efficient at filtering the big stuff, by coughing or sneezing it out. It’s the smaller stuff that’s more insidious.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“This is not just a local issue.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“The smaller they get, the more likely you breathe them in,” says Pfister, “deeper into our lungs and all the way into the bloodstream they can go.” That, she says, can contribute to respiratory and heart ailments later on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And \u003ca title=\"NCAR - post\" href=\"http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/wildfires.shtml\">these things get around\u003c/a>. Pfister says the pollutants can rise six miles into the air and there, driven by high winds in the upper atmosphere, can end up contributing to air pollution hundreds of miles away. “It’s not infrequent that we here in Colorado see smoke from wildfires in California,” she noted. “This is not just a local issue.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the contrary, it’s “global” in the literal sense when you account for the greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and black carbon, though fires remain a relatively small contributor to global warming, compared to the more intentional burning of fossil fuels. And Pfister notes, perhaps searching for something positive in all this, that at least when the forest grows back, it will resume siphoning CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it again. And she adds that some of the particle emissions, or aerosols, tend to “scatter sunlight” and create at least a short-term cooling effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given the generally accepted forecast of more intense fires driven by climate disruption, however, Pfister expects wildfires to become a larger share of the overall air pollution problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for calculating exactly how much gunk is going up there, Pfister says that gets complicated. She says part of the problem is in how you define “smoke,” and when it’s heavy enough to constitute a plume. “Then it depends on how big the fire is, how much biomass is burned, how active is the fire (is it flaming and strongly convective, is it laying down and smoldering), how fast and slow the winds move the smoke,” and so on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Larger “fallout” can cause different types of problems. Early this week, officials were grappling with how to respond to the ash raining down on San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, near the fire’s eastern front in Yosemite. The fast-growing blaze posed potential problems for both the water supply and hydropower output. Monday, city power officials had idled two of the dam’s three hydropower units as the fire advanced.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
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